Last Train Leaving Wonderland
by Lizbeth Marcs
Summary: COMPLETE — Xander and Faith have a plan, but life keeps interfering.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **_Last Train Leaving Wonderland_  
**Author:** Lizbeth Marcs  
**Summary:** Xander's got a plan, but life keeps interfering.  
**Genre:** Future fic, dark fic  
**Rating:** NC-17

**Series:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_  
**Characters: **Xander, Faith, Giles, Buffy, original characters  
**Pairings:** Xander/Faith

**Warnings:** Multiple deaths (no canon characters), violence, smut, discussion of child rape and drug use, adult language and themes, vague spoilers for all of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and one for _Angel the Series _(Xander going to Africa post-'Chosen')  
**Author's Notes:** Written for the annual Lynnevitational on LiveJournal. Takes place in November 2008 (in short, post-'Chosen'). All related comics are willfully and cheerfully ignored.

**Disclaimer:** Xander Harris, Faith Lehane, Rupert Giles, Buffy Summers and all associated characters and organizations are the property of FOX and Mutant Enemy. Any mention of real life events and real people is not meant to imply that the people or incidents in question as they are used in the story have any relationship to reality. All original characters and the plot are mine. No payment was asked for or received in the writing of this story and no profit was earned. No copyright infringement on FOX or Mutant Enemy is intended.

* * *

_Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. — from _Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

* * *

"I hate waiting."

"That's because you have the patience of a 5-year-old."

Faith's eyes narrowed as she frowned at Xander. "This from the guy who loses his shit if the coffee baristas are too slow."

Xander shot her a cheeky grin as he flopped backwards onto the gritty sand. His leather jacket creaked as he lifted his arms to put his hands behind his head. "Okay, I admit to having a severe lack of patience when it comes to the greasy kid stuff."

"Good. That means I don't have to bring up the shit that went down in Providence."

Xander ignored her. "But when it comes to the big, blow-your-mind scheme? I have enough patience to wait until the sun grows cold. One year and the clock's still ticking, baby."

Faith snorted and joined him in lying back on the sand with her hands behind her head to stare up at the stars.

There was a beat of silence.

"I know you've got some devastating comeback on the tip of that knife-like tongue of yours," Xander cheerfully remarked. "So, c'mon. Let me have it. Don't let me being your daddy hold you back."

Faith rolled her eyes. "If you're really my daddy, then what we did back at the hotel room was illegal, immoral, and disgusting."

"Please don't even try telling me the idea bothers you."

Faith grinned up at the stars. "Actually, the idea gets me hot. Very hot."

Xander could hear the happy sound in Faith's voice and he, too, joined her in grinning up at the stars. He mentally filed away the information for future reference so he'd be able to employ it in a big way at a later date. "Daddy-kink, hunh? I guess I should've pegged you for that."

Faith responded, "More like the daddies have a real schoolgirl kink, I gotta admit, though, some good clean family fun played the right way could make this girl wet."

Xander smoothly rolled onto his side, and propped his head up with elbow firmly planted in the sand while precariously balancing his right cheek on his fist. "Are you never not wet?" he asked with a wolfish grin. "I was pretty sure I wore you out."

"Since when does the 5 minutes it takes until you pop off wear anyone out?" Faith asked. "Unless we're talking about you. It's all rush-rush-rush like a kid on a sugar high for a few crazy minutes, then you fall asleep. Only way I get off is if I finish the job myself."

"Ooooo, burn. But you're waaaaay too late. If you wanted that to sting, you should've said that right after I told you that I have enough patience to wait until the sun grows cold when it comes to things that matter." Xander's grin got distinctly more predatory. "Which I guess means you don't matter."

"My prison shrink had word for that remark: projection," Faith said in a bored tone.

"And on that note, I'm pretty sure you have to refrain from saying mean things to me."

Faith lazily kicked out a foot. It landed against Xander's shin with a satisfying _bonk_.

Xander pivoted forward with his elbow still firmly planted in the sand and right cheek still balanced on his fist until he was practically nose to nose with Faith. "I'm pretty sure that's against the rules, too," he added in a husky voice.

"What the hell is it with you?" Faith lazily swatted at his left shoulder. "To hear you talk, there's some kind of rulebook out there for this shit, and you've memorized the whole fucking thing chapter and verse."

"I bet there _is_ a rulebook somewhere, not that I'd bother to read it if there was," Xander good-naturedly admitted. "But despite my tragic inability to quote you chapter and verse from any kind of rulebook, I _am_ pretty sure that I'm due a little respect."

Faith did a half-abdominal crunch and captured his lips with hers. As she sank back down onto the sand, she nipped at Xander's lower lip hard enough to get a groan out of him. "You'd be bored off your ass if I was a sub," she said as she smiled up into his face.

Xander brought his fingers of his left hand to rub along his swollen lower lip, which was even now stretching into a genuine smile. "You figured me out way too fast."

* * *

"What is it with this beach?"

"What the fuck is it _now_?"

"That plane that just went by." Xander gestured at the starlit sky. "Here I am playing connect the stars—"

"Making dirty pictures in your head," Faith interrupted.

"I've named those stars over there 'Faith's pussy' in your honor," Xander lazily gestured at a different part of the night sky, "and stop interrupting me. What I'm trying to say is that here I am, drifting along, catching some starlight, and this plane flies overhead and interrupts the view."

"Revere's on the flight path to Logan," Faith explained.

"I figured that out after watching approximately bazillion planes fly over our heads," Xander testily responded. "What I _mean_ is we're on a beach, a big beach with big beach amenities to judge by that boulevard behind us. And trust me when I tell you, this California boy knows from beaches. Yet, the locals seem to think nothing of using it as a hellish highway for the very scary, very tiny local airport. International airport, my eye."

"Finished?" Faith asked.

Just then, an Air France plane passed over their heads flying close enough to the ground to not only give them a detailed view of the airline's logo and the plane's number, but also show them that the landing gear was lowering into the down position.

"Good grief," Xander muttered. "I thought that one was going to land on our heads."

"You wanna know the why of the flight path or not?" Faith asked.

"Educate me, Yoda."

"'Cause it's Revere," Faith said, as if that settled the matter.

"Well, that explains everything. Oh, wait! No it doesn't." Xander made a snarling sound. "I can't imagine this helps the tourism industry at all."

Faith burst out laughing so hard that Xander was sure she had ruptured an internal organ.

"So I take it that Revere isn't exactly overrun with tourists even during the summer season," Xander dryly remarked.

Laughter advanced to howling at the sky as Faith rolled back and forth on the sand with her arms wrapped around her aching stomach and tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Which means that this beach, which looks like a million bucks at night," Xander began.

"Stop it…stop it…yer killin' me over here," Faith interrupted between gales of laughter.

"Is really an utter shithole, which would be apparent to anyone saw it when the sun was up or during a full moon," Xander finished.

"If you don't like our shithole, then get the fuck off our beach, asshole," snapped an unfamiliar voice behind them.

Faith was on her feet in a flash. She glowered up the height of the 10-foot high cement seawall that separated the beach from the street. Her low, throaty growl began building in volume and intensity.

Xander, who had leapt to his feet in unison with Faith, immediately closed on her. He barely spared a glance for the stunned and frightened couple staring down at them from the top of the seawall as he grabbed Faith by the shoulder in an iron grip. "Not now," he snarled into her ear. "We can't afford to attract attention."

Faith's growling immediately stopped, but she continued to glower at the frozen couple.

Xander looked up at pair starting down at them. The girlfriend was a tasty little blonde treat with overly teased big hair and somewhat vacant eyes. He could see that she was wearing a very low-cut, ready-for-action kind of shirt underneath her oversized dungaree-style padded jacket that set off her very ample, possibly artificially enhanced, assets. The boyfriend was definitely a steroid case; built like a brick wall, cursed with a set of gorilla arms, and sporting slicked-back hair that went out of style back in the heyday of the 80s. Clearly, there was nothing tasty about him at all.

In any fair world, the boyfriend would easily rake the beach's sand using both Faith and Xander with one hand tied behind his back.

Good thing the world wasn't fair.

"If I were you, I'd make a run for it," Xander mildly remarked.

The couple snapped out of their terrified paralysis and scuttled away.

Xander vowed to count to 10 before ripping a chunk out of Faith's hide. He made it to three before he grabbed her arm and yanked her around to face him. When he saw that the ambient light from the street above their heads was bringing out the gold flecks in her brown eyes, irritation immediately transformed into anger.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Xander snarled as he grabbed Faith by her upper arms and gave her a shake hard enough to cause her head to snap back-and-forth like a rag doll. "What part of 'low-profile' did you _not_ get?"

"What's your issue? They're just local trash with 'tudes," Faith snapped as she violently broke his hold.

Xander was on her again. This time he grabbed her upper arm in a bruising grip with one hand. With the other, he grabbed a handful of her long hair to yank back her head and expose her beautifully scarred throat. "If this plan is going to work, we have to be _invisible_ until we've got the jewel safely in our hands," he reminded her in a low and dangerous voice. "That means you _cannot_ whip out your dick and wave it in some muscle-head's face every time you think you've been disrespected." He shoved her away with enough force that she stumbled a little in the sand. "How many times do you need me to repeat this? _Old school_ all the way until we finish this little dance."

"Screw you, Harris," Faith snarled. "I should rip your throat out for that."

Xander gestured that she was welcome to bring it on if she felt like blowing the whole, beautiful plan just because she was pissed about a justified smackdown.

"Rargh!" Faith exclaimed with frustration as she violently kicked around in the sand, sending plumes of dust and dirt flying into the air. "We're not even sure this plan of yours is going to _work_."

"It'll work," Xander serenely said. "My plans for the past year have more than worked out. I've got a track record of genius."

Faith shot him a vicious glare, but she couldn't hold it. Her expression changed with the flick of a dimpled grin and she giggled like the innocent school girl she wasn't. "Shit yeah. The Council's perfect little butt boy."

"And don't you forget it," Xander said with a royal, magnanimous wave of his hand. "If we pull this off, we'll be legends."

"And untouchable," Faith happily purred.

* * *

"I'm hungry."

"_Again_? We just ate two hours ago."

"Well, I am," Faith petulantly said.

"What is it with you? Do you have a hole in your stomach or what?" Xander knew his questions were totally living in rhetorical territory. Faith was always ready for fighting, fucking, and food. This knowledge did nothing to blunt the edge of his fast-fading patience. "We picked up huge meals at that place down the road two hours ago."

"The Lounge," Faith said, completely apropos of nothing.

Xander frowned at her. "Hunh?"

"The Shipwreck Lounge, the place with all the drunk, stupid fuckers where we grabbed our bite to eat," Faith explained. "The clientele you saw in there? Typical of the shitbirds that bar-hop their way up and down the boulevard hunting for jailbait snatch. I swear this town has got more dives per square mile than any place on earth. Says something that none of 'em are going out of business any time soon."

Xander rolled his good eye as he reached under his eye patch to scratch the itchy skin underneath his empty eye socket. The gritty sand of Revere Beach was not doing him any favors. Hopefully, he wouldn't have to put up with the inconvenience much longer. Maybe a month, tops, and he could toss the patch in favor of a new, magically installed eye. It wouldn't be soon enough.

"I'm gonna get something to eat," Faith declared as she hauled herself upright into a sitting position.

"Faith, remember what I said about 'low profile'?" Xander warned.

Faith aimed a weak slap at his upper arm, prompting Xander to sit up as well.

"Faith," Xander repeated the warning.

"Stop panicking. I'm not that hungry," Faith said. "Just planning to hit Kelly's for some deep-fried fish food."

Xander chuckled with relief. "That takeout place is still open? Isn't it like 9 o'clock or something? A weekend even during the off-season I maybe could see, but a weeknight in November?"

"Kelly's is open 24/7, 365," Faith said.

Xander gave his head a hard shake. "I know I didn't see anything resembling a sit-down restaurant attached to those take-out counters open to the sidewalk."

"This is our sit-down restaurant." Faith gestured across the darkened beach. "It's part of the charm."

"I'm trying to imagine the charm in the dead of February with an ice cold wind coming off the ocean," Xander remarked.

"That's why it's a B.Y.O.B. affair that time of year," Faith said.

"Yes, because getting pass-out drunk when hypothermia's a threat is really smart."

"Who said anything about a bottle? I was thinkin' more like warm body." Faith lasciviously waggled her eyebrows to make the text even more text-y.

Xander gave up. "Fine. Get enough to share."

Faith hopped to her feet and headed for the stairs that would take her up to the street.

"And Faith, _low profile_," Xander yelled after her.

The wave she tossed him over her shoulder without looking back did not inspire confidence.

As she disappeared up the steps, Xander turned his frowning attention to the ocean. The waves' white caps fluoresced in the darkness, despite the fact that the new moon was in full swing and there was no light other than the weak ambient light from the yellowed streetlights behind him. In the distance to his right, the Boston skyline twinkled like a diamond promise in a cloud of light pollution. Even from this distance, he could feel the beckoning temptation of the rich urban life with its late nights and herds of co-eds casting off the parental shackles for the first time with wild abandon.

A vampire could have a real party there, Xander reflected. Of course, said party would last all of 0.25 seconds if the vampire in question caught the attention of co-eds who just happened to be members of the well-trained contingent of Slayers attending any one of the city's many, many universities. Any poor sucker who tried it didn't stand a chance. A long and undusty unlife was simply out of the question there.

He almost felt bad for vampires stupid enough to try living full-time in Boston and its environs. The key word here being "almost," in large part because it went against his very grain to grant pity to those who insisted on being blatantly stupid.

Xander snatched up a random twig and absently traced patterns in the sand as he mentally reviewed his plan, now a year in the making.

So far, so good. The whole thing was going off without a hitch. They were now down to the hard bit of it: waiting. Much as he agreed with Faith that the part of the plan where they do a whole bunch of nothing felt like an itch under the skin that no amount of scratching could relieve, he couldn't afford to tell her that. She'd take it as a sign that it'd be perfectly okay to start something just for shits and giggles.

Faith was too impulsive at times, too willing to give in to instinct when the better course of action was to take a 5-minute timeout to think things through. That was her big problem, and by extension his. Yet, she was also cunning and brimming with street smarts, which he'd confidently bet on even over a Watcher with a PhD when it came to a life-and-death struggle. It was those finer qualities, even more than the fact that she was a regular Pocahontas for Boston and its environs, which inspired his decision to grab her for this caper in the first place.

The fantastic, never-ending sex didn't hurt either.

Xander scanned the beach out of habit, more than anything else. There had been the more than a few dog-walkers and joggers earlier, but for the past half-hour or so the sand had been comfortingly empty. He had been dubious when Faith recommended the place during the various scouting missions over the past week, especially given the heavily trafficked thoroughfare and the hopping string of bars and take-out joints just on the other side of the seawall behind him. However, after spending the past two hours sitting on the sand, he had to admit that Faith was dead-on in her assessment that the location was perfect.

A plane roared overhead and Xander scowled up at it. In a fit of pique, he snatched up a smooth pebble from the sand and impotently flung it with all his might at the American Airlines plane destroying his reflecting time.

"Fucker," he spit after the departing plane.

As the roar and the plane faded off over the water toward Boston, Xander once more fell to scanning the beach. As his view swept over to his extreme left, he saw a sight that froze him in place. Two people — despite the distance and the dark he could see it was a man and a woman — were down below the high tide line and appeared to be digging into the sand.

With the amount of work they putting into carving a space out for themselves, it was pretty obvious that they planned to be there quite awhile.

"Shit," Xander hissed. Potential witnesses. This was not something he needed.

His eye narrowed as he thought. One thing was clear: he'd have to move the plan just a little bit off its intended path. The only question left to answer was how.

* * *

"I come bearing snacks."

"Please tell me that all you're bearing is the deep fried fish food."

"Just a scallop plate with onion rings and extra tartar sauce," Faith cheerfully announced. "Oh, and something a little extra."

A fat wallet landed in the sand near Xander's feet.

Xander looked up from checking the duffle bag to stupidly stare at it. "Where the hell did you get that?"

"Where do you think?" Faith asked as she plopped down onto the sand with a whump.

Xander straightened up and glared down at her. "I thought I said 'low profile'," he snarled.

Faith paused in lifting the aluminum foil off the plate. "I picked some mook's pocket while he was waddling off to his car. He probably won't even know it's missing until he gets home. What the hell do you think I did?"

The response caught Xander flat-footed. "Oh. Okay. That's all right then."

Faith tucked into her food, grumbling about nervous nellies hashing her good time.

"Do I have to remind you about what happened in Atlantic City the Day After?" Xander snapped in response to her muttered complaints.

A tartar sauce-covered fried scallop stopped halfway between the plate and Faith's mouth as she paused to glare at him. "That was a _month_ ago. And it was special circumstances. You're _still_ holding that shit against me?" She tossed the scallop in her mouth and defiantly chewed. "If that's the case, why am I even still here?"

Xander rubbed his temples as he carefully chose his words. "You're right," he finally said. "When you're right, you're right."

"Damn straight." Just like that, Faith appeared to have forgiven all.

"But the point is I had to do some very fast dancing to cover your trail," Xander patiently explained. "It was a good thing I was able to put the blame squarely on those chumps setting up shop in Harrah's so I could sic the nice people in the Atlantic City Council house on them. If they didn't believe me, we'd've been in deep shit. If you go nuts now, there's _no way _I'd be able to cover your ass again."

"Okay, okay. I get your point. Fuck it. I _got_ your point," Faith said with a resigned air. "But enough already. You can't say I haven't been a little angel ever since."

"You. An angel." Xander snorted. "Please don't confuse being slightly better about keeping yourself in check with sporting an actual halo."

"Like you've been a saint."

"Hey! One thing you can say about me is that I'm very careful about not shitting in my own nest," Xander snapped back.

"All I need is one word to show how you ain't so perfect," Faith primly said. "Providence."

Xander mentally kicked himself. The wait was getting to him more than he thought. He just had to keep pushing for that bickering argument, didn't he? All Faith was doing was responding in kind. If he didn't put a stop to it now, this would either end with them trading blows or vigorously fucking each other into the sand. Probably both. Right now they couldn't afford to do either.

"Touché," Xander said in hopes of shutting down the argument. He snatched up the wallet and tossed it carelessly into the duffle bag. The credit cards were surely a loss, but the extra walking around money would definitely come in handy. He once more bent over the duffle bag to take yet another inventory of its contents.

Going through the exercise of checking his gear served to help focus his mind. It wasn't that he was afraid that he'd lost something between the time he packed it and just this moment, but he liked to reassure himself that everything was in order. The bag contained clean clothes; extra stakes; 35 Ziploc baggies of carefully saved vampire dust; bank books matching dozens of bank accounts in tax havens located all over the world that were chock full of funds siphoned off from several now-dead African strongmen who got on his bad side in the past year; $2,000 in American dollars and $2,000 in Euros; and numerous passports with matching credit cards bearing fake identities and addresses for both himself and Faith.

Faith was apparently itching to continue the fight, probably because she wanted the usual big-bang finish. "Are you checking the duffle bag _again_? I swear you're a classic OCD case."

Xander reminded himself that rising to Faith's bait, while holding the promise of fun, wouldn't help either one of them. True he could rattle off the contents by memory, but he was a big believer in making sure that all his ducks were in order. It had saved his hide more than once in the years since Sunnydale collapsed while he was the Council's man in Africa, _especially_ over the past year.

"Pays to be prepared," Xander grunted at her as he carefully placed his and Faith's varied forms of fake documentation inside a hidden inner pocket and sealed it shut.

"There's prepared, and then there's obsessive." Faith's voice got dangerously close to exasperated affection.

"Don't knock it," Xander said as he zipped the duffle bag closed and straightened up in a full-body stretch. "I'll have you know that this kind of preparation got me into your Atlantic City apartment. And, I might add, it got me in _with_ a full invite."

Faith's answering chuckle crossed the line into full-blown affection, a sign she was backing off on that hoped-for argument. "Yeah, you got me good there," she happily admitted. "Obsess away, then."

Xander couldn't resist grinning. "Hey, that food actually smells kinda good."

"The perfect snack," Faith agreed as she plopped another fried scallop smothered with tartar sauce into her mouth. She bent low over the plate and took a deep sniff. As she sat back up, she added, "Fuck me, I forgot how good this shit was."

"How long has it been?" Xander asked as he sat down next to her and stole an onion ring.

"Lemme think. I left B-town a little over 10 years ago, and last time I was up here was before I got Fate's middle finger in the form of a wooden stake, so…almost 11 years," Faith said. "Shit. A lifetime ago. _Two _lifetimes ago."

"This is very fine dining indeed," Xander said as he grabbed a fried scallop off the plate. "I'm pretty sure that I would've just moved into a nearby apartment so I could have this every day and twice on Christmas."

Faith snorted. "Hey, quality shit like this ain't cheap, and it ain't exactly hot on human metabolism. If you followed that plan, not only would you be broke, you'd be fat."

"Didn't hurt you any."

Faith gave him a dose of what-the-hell face.

"Not that you're not hotter than the sun at noon now, but even back in the day you were smoking," Xander answered her unasked question.

Faith's cheeks dimpled with a grin. "I wasn't eating this shit every day, you moron."

"Such is my lot in life," Xander lightly said. "I pay you a compliment, you call me a moron. Tell me, is it me thinking you're hot that makes me moron? Or is it me admitting it out loud?"

"That's what saves you from being a total moron." Faith dipped a fried scallop in the tartar sauce and tossed it in her mouth.

"Well, until you change your tune and acknowledge the genius that is me, I hereby promise to never say anything nice about you, ever. I won't even think it," Xander solemnly swore.

"Hmph. A promise you'll keep until I suck your brains out through your dick." Faith licked her lips, although that could've been because of the food as opposed to underlining her single-entendre about sexy, good-time fun. "You always call me 'Oh, God,' when I do that."

Xander glanced to his left to see if the couple was still there. Much to his unhappiness, they were. Action had to be taken if he wanted to be sure that the beach was clear of witnesses when the time came to make their move. "Tell you what. I'll pay you a compliment _without _making you swallow if you answer some questions."

"Shoot."

"See that couple over there?" Xander asked with a jerk of his head.

Faith set the plate aside and brushed her hands together before looking in the direction he indicated. She was silent a few moments, first because she had to find the right patch of beach and then because she needed to figure out what she was looking at.

"My bet? Smoking weed, followed by some screwing, and then a nap," was her final judgment.

"A nap? At night on a beach in November? Please tell me you're kidding."

Faith licked a finger before holding it up, as if she were trying to determine wind direction. "Not that cold, relatively speaking. It's been kinda warm for this time of year over the past few days."

"They're below the high tide line! The second the tide comes in, they're going to get soaked. I don't care how unseasonably warm it is. It's still November. That's practically begging for pneumonia."

"So? They're local stoners," Faith shrugged. "Smarts are not something they got to spare. Bets are they lent their single shared brain cell out to a friend and forgot to ask for it back."

Xander made a low, frustrated growl in his throat.

Faith immediately responded by snapping into professional mode. "What's on your mind?"

"I just want to be clear," Xander said. "You're telling me that they could be there awhile."

"At least until the tide turns and starts lapping at their toes. Maybe even longer if they're stoned enough to pass out," Faith said with a knowing nod.

Xander rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand as he thought. "Okay. What about beach patrols?"

Faith shook her head. "This time of year? None. That's half the reason why I said this was the place to be. Now if it was summer? They're pretty regular and as thick as sand fleas. No joke. You can't do nothin' on this beach after sundown during the summer. But once we head into the ass-end of autumn, it's every beach bum's party. Right now those closet pervs are running porn movies in their heads with their hands wrapped around their dicks, as opposed to interrupting some wicked excellent real-life porn on the beach."

Xander weighed the pros and cons in his head. No matter which way he looked at it, circumstances dictated that they take action.

"I've been thinking," he slowly began. "Two more set pieces would probably enhance the tragedy."

Faith perked right up. "Yeah?"

"Can you guarantee that we're not going to be interrupted if we pay our fellow beach-goers a visit?" Xander asked.

"Oh, yeah. Sure," Faith eagerly nodded.

Xander groaned. "Faith, before you leap in with both feet, _please_ remember my gold rules of survival."

"I know. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Whatever. If you repeat it _again_, I'm going to barf all over my delicious Kelly's plate and that would be a crying shame," Faith said.

"What I'm saying is that I need you to be _sure_," Xander stressed. "Because if we get interrupted while taking care of our unexpected problem, it's going to get a whole lot messier than we can afford. So, _please_, think really hard about this."

Faith snorted, but she seemed to take Xander's admonishment seriously. She stood up, turned around, and scanned the top edge of the seawall. She then looked over her shoulder at the couple down near the water's edge before frowning back up at the seawall. Her gaze then moved to the night sky, noting the utter lack of any moon. Her gaze then switched to the distant, glittering jewel that was nighttime Boston, as if trying to judge whether its exuberant light pollution would reveal too much about the impending situation.

As Xander watched her careful evaluation of the immediate environment, he could feel his chest swell with pride. Finally, _something_ was sinking into that head of hers. Sure, it was a very small step for logic, but it was very huge step for Faith.

Once her study was complete, Faith dropped onto the sand in a cross-legged pose with a frown.

"Well?" Xander prompted.

Faith nodded almost to herself. "We could pull it off, but we'd have to stay low to the sand, approach them quietly from behind, take 'em completely by surprise, and do it quick. Even though they're probably toasted, we have to assume they haven't sparked their doobies yet to make double-sure they don't see or hear us."

Xander fought back a smile. There was only one last problem to overcome. "That's the other issue. If they've been indulging the whole time they've been here—"

"I know, I know," Faith interrupted. She looked at him with clear, considering eyes. "We're going to have to take care of them the non-fun way. The good news is that we'll be able to tell by the smell one way or the other before we get close."

Xander let his smile break free as he got to his feet. "Well, let's get this over with. The sooner, the better."

( 1 )


	2. Chapter 2

_At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. _— _from _Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

* * *

"Man, oh, man. That was _great_. I really needed that."

"Shit, yeah. It was a fucking honor and privilege to be part of something so beautiful."

Xander threw a companionable arm around Faith's shoulders as they walked across the sand back to their original position. "I can't believe it. We nailed them mid­-_thrust_."

"I was so sure they were stoned before we got close enough to get whiff," Faith whooped. "And all they got on 'em is a six-pack? With none of the bottles opened? There's horny, and then there's stupid teen-aged horny."

"Always delicious," Xander agreed. "And speaking of horny, not to mention popping off after not even 5-minutes' worth of thrust, I barely sink my hunk-a-hunk of burnin' love into you, as the King would say, and you're baying at the sky."

"Hey, what the fuck did you expect? With the accent on _fuuuuck_." Faith elbowed Xander in the ribs hard enough to cause him to stumble.

They reached the seawall and their now-forgotten plate of Kelly's deliciousness. Xander dropped the duffle back onto the sand. Although it had been awkward bringing it along, he didn't feel comfortable leaving it behind. There was always a chance that someone would look down, see an unattended bag, and make off with it while they were busy.

Faith, meanwhile, was still exalting over the successful conclusion of the side-plan and the righteous screwing that followed. "You _know_ a perfect payoff like that gets my panties good and soaked." Faith flung out her arms and spun around in a circle as she laughed. "I saw you standing there, and I couldn't resist."

"Yeah, but you're not the one with a raging case of blue balls," Xander good-naturedly complained.

"Really." Faith sauntered up to him in walk that still managed to be sultry despite the fact she was moving across uneven sand.

"Really." Xander leaned back against the seawall as he watched her approach with an appreciative expression. "It's very painful."

Faith pressed up against him. "Hmmmm, guess I'm gonna hafta take care of that."

"I'm sure you'll think of something," Xander encouraged her with a low voice.

Faith's grin matched the predatory gleam in her eyes as she reached for his fly. "Now don't forget my name. It's 'Oh, God,' in case you forget."

She freed his cock with a deft reach-in-and-pull-out action as she slid down the length of his body. Xander's head thunked back against the cement wall. The logical part of his brain, the part that had kept him kicking around Africa with his skin intact for 11 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days after fate threw him a U-turn, and the northeastern United States for 1 month and 4 days after hooking up with Faith, told him that it would've been smarter to keep his mouth shut and suffer in silence. He couldn't afford to be distracted in this way right this second.

When Faith's mouth closed around his cock, all thoughts of caution flew right out of his head.

He got himself more comfortable, and looked down to watch Faith's head bobbing up and down along his length. Much as he wanted to add to the friction by moving his hips to bring himself off a little faster, he held off and instead let her do all the work. A leisurely blowjob seemed to him to be just the thing he needed to take the edge off.

Xander placed a hand on Faith's head to encourage her as he made low, moaning noises.

Faith, taking the hint, added a little teeth-scrapping action as she took him deeper and deeper into her mouth and down her throat.

Xander moaned his approval with an "Oooooh, Goooood."

The low chuckle Faith managed to give in response while expertly sucking him off sent a bolt of electricity up his spine.

Just when he was getting into it, his cell phone rang.

Fuck careful, just this once.

"Don't you dare stop," he said in a strangled voice as he shakily patted down the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

Faith slowed down the pace of her bobbing and backed off on the deep throat action, all the better to have him really beg for the big finish after he was done with this call Xander supposed. He pulled out the cell and checked the number of the incoming call on the screen. He groaned, this time not with pleasure.

"It's the…it's the Council house…in the city," he managed to get out.

Faith released him from her mouth with a plop.

That's when Xander decided to really, really fuck careful. "Keep going," he ordered Faith.

This earned him a feral grin from Faith and she went back to work.

As he flipped open his cell, he cleared his throat. "Yes?" he answered shortly.

Faith began licking a circle around the head of his penis as she stared up at him with amused eyes.

"Xander? Are you all right? You sound rather harried."

Xander stood bolt upright. "Giles?" he asked with shock.

Faith immediately stopped what she was doing and stared up at him in dumb surprise.

Giles chuckled. "I'm not entirely sure from the tone of your voice that you're pleased I'm here."

Xander's mind raced. "Here? As in _Boston_ here?"

Giles was immediately on alert. "Xander? What's wrong?"

"I'm actually relieved and ecstatic to hear your voice. Shocked, but still relieved and ecstatic," Xander answered. "You have no idea what kind of night we've had."

"I was about to tell you the same thing," Giles said. The trepidation in his voice couldn't have been clearer. "I had to be teleported over here so I could help deal with the emergency."

Xander groaned as he envisioned his perfect plan falling to pieces. He should've known. Him. Of all people. He should've fucking _known._ "Emergency? What emergency?"

Faith was on her feet in a flash. She leaned in close, probably so she could capture snippets of whatever Giles was going to say with her super-sensitive hearing. Xander re-arranged his position so Faith could more easily listen in on Giles's half of the conversation.

"It appears that your distraction failed," Giles said. "When the Boston contingent descended on the safe house in Watertown, all of the vampire guards were still in place around the magic users and the jewel."

Xander resisted the urge to tuck his rapidly softening cock back into his pants and zip up his fly. Dealing with Giles was far too important to get distracted by the trivial. "That's impossible. Faith and I have been playing tag with a bunch of their minions all night."

"Bloody hell. Are you sure?" Giles asked.

"They're wearing the armband with that stylized snake on it, so, yeah, I'm very, very sure," Xander answered.

"Where are you now?" Giles asked. "We attempted a tracking spell on the off-chance that your protection had failed, but we got nothing for our trouble. In one sense, it's good news. In the other…well, I suppose it means that in many ways you and Faith are left without a safety net."

Xander felt all the tension release from his shoulders. Whatever else had gone wrong, the spell that shielded them from tracking spells that had been cast on Faith and himself after the clusterfuck that was Providence — on Giles's insistence that it was for their own protection, no less — still held. As long as they had that, they still had their escape hatch.

"We managed to get them to chase us all the way into Harvard Square," Xander answered, deftly leading Giles back on plan. True it was _his_ plan and not the Council's, but Giles didn't know that.

"How on earth did you get them to chase you so far afield?" Giles sounded startled.

"Guess they still remember us from the raid we pulled on some of their boys in Atlantic City," Xander confidently lied.

Faith grinned at him as she mouthed, "Naughty, naughty."

"Ah, yes. That tricky business with Harrah's Casino," Giles said.

"Anyway, we managed to pull them away with, believe it or not, a car chase that stuck to the speed limit and had very little running of the red lights or driving the wrong way up one-way streets as a bonus feature. Guess they don't want to deal with a phalanx of pissed-off cops stretching across several towns any more than we do. We've ditched the car. Right now Faith is a half-block away trying to hotwire another one, just in case someone reported our rental driving erratically and called our license plate in to the police."

Faith mouthed the words "Brattle Street" at him.

"Just to let you know, we left the rental in some parking lot off Brattle Street in Cambridge. At least, that's the street name Faith told me. Couldn't exactly tell you where though, since me not so much with being the local and the whole part where we were running for our lives," Xander added.

"Sod the rental, Xander," Giles said with irritation. "Are you and Faith hurt?"

Xander gave Faith the thumb's up sign. "Aside from the fact that my heart's pounding, my palms are sweating, my stomach is permanently taking up residence in my throat, and the neck strain from constantly looking over my shoulder since the sun went down, I'm fine. As for Faith, she's having a blast. It's a hell of a welcome home party for her."

"What's your situation?" Giles was all business now.

"I think we managed to shake them for the time being, but it's hard to tell." Xander liked the layer of uncertainty he added to his tone. "There's a lot of people out on the streets, which, duh, that's why Faith thought this was the perfect place to keep them off-balance while we play tag with them. The problem is that even if our shadows decided to keep the armbands instead of ditching them to throw us off, we might not spot them before they're on top of us."

Giles breath on the other end of the line was shaky. "It appears your refuge is a double-edged sword."

"And how," Xander agreed. "Look, not to get all whiny high-school style, but do you have any idea how much longer Faith and I have to play pop-go-the-weasel with these guys? Because I have to tell you, I don't like our chances if they catch up to us. They looked pretty pissed."

"The good news is that we have the Oblique Jewel in our hands," Giles began. "As soon as Faith is done, _ahem_, 'borrowing' your chosen mode of transportation you may feel free to slip away unnoticed. Simply tell us where to deliver the jewel so you can safely smuggle it out of the city."

Xander felt a low nervous flutter in his stomach. Giles was leaving too much unsaid, starting with the real reason why he was here. "What are you going to do?"

"What I came to do," Giles mysteriously answered.

"Which explains exactly nothing." Xander didn't bother to hide the tone of complaint.

"There's been a slight change in plans. It's readily apparent that we have a leak somewhere in our organization," Giles said.

It took everything Xander had not to laugh out loud with relief. He knew damn well that there was no leak. It's just that Faith and he had plans of their own, part of which involved them _not _doing their part to make the local Slayers' jobs easier. It was all about keeping the Council house off-balance because it was dealing with more pissed off cultists out for blood than they expected once the jewel was stolen from its place of honor. Still, there must've been more vampire guards on the jewel than even Xander's intelligence had indicated if they yanked Giles _himself_ across the Atlantic on an emergency teleport.

"Xander?" Giles asked with worry in his voice. "Are you still there?"

"Sorry. Too busy processing. That is not news I really loved hearing," Xander quickly answered.

"It seems the cult has been one step ahead of us since you made contact with Faith in Atlantic City. And heaven knows the less said about the mess they caused when they caught up with the pair of you in Providence the better," Giles said. "Your news further suggests that they may have significantly enhanced the protective contingent around the Oblique Jewel in preparation for an attack that they couldn't possibly know was coming."

"Don't tell me that. _Please_ don't tell me that." Xander threw a touch of begging in his voice. "We're royally boned if that's even remotely true."

"Not necessarily," Giles soothed. "Jane and her Watchers are planning an ambush in an abandoned warehouse on the waterfront in East Boston. I will, of course, be the bait."

The news of Giles's untimely arrival was getting better and better. "Bait?" Xander asked.

"Yes. I'm going to be casting a containment spell, ostensibly to prevent the jewel from being touched by human hands," Giles explained in a low, furtive voice. "We're hoping it will draw all the cultists in the greater Boston area, as well as the jewel's Praetorian Guard, to our spot. Needless to say, every active Slayer and Watcher in the city will be waiting to greet them when they arrive."

Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Even though he had been preparing for this night for a year, events had managed to top his admittedly high hopes.

"I hope it works," Xander said when he was sure he'd be able to keep the happiness out of his voice.

Xander paused a beat as he debated with himself. Even though he knew Buffy, Willow, and Dawn were all tied up thanks to those false prophecies he planted in the Council's database under Andrew's user name, Giles would think it was weird if he didn't at least mention the old gang. Still, there was always the risk that bringing them up would give Giles the bright idea to teleport any one of them — or worse, all three of them — to Boston to help with Giles's crisis.

It wasn't exactly an idle concern, either. Hell, he never in a million years expected Giles to make a surprise guest appearance, and yet here he was.

"Xander? Is everything all right?" Giles asked.

Xander silently cursed. He hesitated just a little bit too long. "Sorry. I thought I saw a suspicious shadow. Turned out to be nothing. Just some hipster in Army surplus," Xander said. "I was going to ask, though. Why you? Where the hell is Willow? Or Buffy for that matter? Heck, how about Dawn? She's been known to cast a spell or two in her day."

"Unfortunately, Willow and Dawn are still embroiled in that business in Hong Kong. Although the rumors about Lord Ashmiran were false, as it turns out, he was hiding a certain amount of black magical activity from the Council. He was…_displeased_ by their investigations into his affairs. As for Buffy, she is en route to St. Petersburg to help the Council house there thwart a prophecy about an ascension," Giles said.

Xander grinned at Faith, who looked as relieved as he felt. "When it rains, it pours."

"Indeed. And given the fact that we have no notion who our leak might be, I had no idea who was still trustworthy within our organization. I had to come myself to deal with this business," Giles said.

"Yeah, well, I so owe you a beer when this over. I owe you a _keg_ of beer." Xander hoped he wasn't piling it on too thick.

Giles chuckled. "I'll collect once we're safely in London and basking in a job well done. American bitters are beastly."

"Not to mention actually chilled." Xander dramatically paused. "Hold on. Faith's heading back here and she's signaling me to make myself less seen."

Xander brought the cell phone down and covered the mouth piece.

"Stick with original plan," he whispered in her ear before handing the cell phone off to her. "And remember, you think he's in London."

"G? No shit? Harris twittered in my ear that you were on the other end of the line," Faith said. "And what's with the call from London? The Council accountants are gonna have a stroke when they get a load of Harris's expense report."

Xander leaned in so he could pick up Giles's half of the conversation.

"You're here? As in Boston here?" Faith cheekily grinned at Xander as she angled herself so both of them could both more easily share the phone.

"I suppose Xander forgot to mention that." Giles's voice was soft as it floated out of the phone's earpiece.

"He didn't get a chance to tell me before I snatched this sucker out of his hand," Faith said.

"Yes, well, there's been a change in plans," Giles began.

Even though Xander wasn't doing anything more than just listening, Faith said, "Harris is shaking his head 'no' at me, which I guess means he'll fill me in about your deal later."

"In the interests of time, that might be best," Giles agreed.

"Anyways, I've hotwired us a Zipcar," Faith said.

"A what?" Giles asked.

As Faith quickly explained what one was, Xander nodded in satisfaction. Getting his hands on a Zipcar card really had been a stroke of luck. Since the real owner was no longer among the living, he felt pretty confident about using the stolen account to their advantage by using the card to borrow a car from one of the Harvard Square parking spots for a few days.

"Anyways, as soon as we spot them sons of bitches, we're ready to lead 'em on another chase," Faith finished.

Xander startled. He couldn't believe it. Faith really had been listening to him about the importance of being careful and paying attention to the details. She remembered that she wasn't supposed to know that Giles had told them it was safe for them to go underground.

"Actually, some good news there. You and Xander may lose your shadows," Giles said.

"Shit. Okay. The Zipcar can still work," Faith said as she winked at Xander.

"You sound…rather disappointed," Giles stuttered.

"Nah. I'm good. It's just I picked a car with a big-ass corporate logo on the doors to make it easy for these losers to follow us," Faith said.

"Perhaps you should choose another, less conspicuous vehicle." Giles sounded nervous.

"Don't want to take a chance hanging around longer than I need to," Faith said. "It'll be fine. I mean, who's stupid enough to steal a _Zipcar_?Especially when you're trying to avoid callin' attention to yourself. It'll be like camouflage in reverse."

"Be careful." Giles paused. "And Faith, we still need a rendezvous point where we can hand the Oblique Jewel off to you and Xander so it'll be obscured by your protective spell."

"Hang on. Let me think." Faith smiled as she tapped her finger against her lips 10 times. "Okay, got it. I seem to remember hearing something about a baby Slayer on the North Shore somewhere. High school age and a local. You know who I'm talking about, right?"

"Let me check." There was a muffled sound that lasted for less than a minute. "You must be referring to Zoe, of course. I've been informed she lives in Swampscott."

Xander resisted the urge to yell, "Score!"

Faith flashed him the thumb's up sign as her grin got wider. "Perfect."

"You're not planning to show up on her doorstep, are you?" Giles sounded slightly alarmed.

"What? And take a chance of leading these mooks to her front door? I'm crazy, but I'm not about to put everything she holds dear in deep shit." Faith managed to sound affronted. "Just tell me that she's got a license to drive, and I _may_ have the perfect place where we can meet."

There were more muffled sounds from Giles's end before he got back on the phone. "Jane informs me that she not only has her driver's license, but her own runabout."

Xander serenely nodded. So far, so good. His snooping through the Council's records using Andrew's username and password had yielded him information that was right on the money.

"G, I could kiss you." Faith could barely contain her glee. "Okay, here's what you do. You ring her up and give her all the info about our contact. Way I figure it she's been kept so far out of this that _no one_ will be watching her. Once you're done giving her the 411, send her ass over to Revere so she can pass the intel onto us."

"Revere?" Giles asked. "Where on earth—"

"City just down the road from her hometown," Faith interrupted. "Bonus, Revere's something like 30 or 45 minutes north of Boston, depending on traffic. It's a far enough away that the drooling gorillas won't think to travel that kind of distance up Route 1 to look for us, but close enough that we can get there with no problem."

"I must say, so far this does sound ideal." Giles's relief practically floated out of the phone and gave Faith a loving pat on the head. "Anywhere in particular?"

"Tell her to head for Wonderland station," Faith answered.

"Wonderland?" Giles sounded somewhat taken aback.

"Yeah. As in _Alice in Wonderland_. Don't worry. Our girl should know where it is the second you drop the name. We'll leave the Zipcar in beachside parking lot, so she should be able to spot it easy enough," Faith said.

"Beach?" Giles asked.

"Like I said, don't sweat it. The girl'll know what you're talking about even if you don't," Faith rapidly said.

A wave of inspiration swept over Xander. He motioned to Faith that he wanted to get back on the phone with Giles.

Faith held up one finger to signal that she wasn't done spitting out her directions. "Tell her that as soon as she parks her car in that same lot, she's to call my cell."

"Where are you and Xander going to be?" Giles asked.

"Staying the hell out of sight just in case," Faith said. "There's a million dark bars down on the boulevard within easy walking distance. I figure we'll tuck ourselves in a corner and blend in with the local flora and fauna. As soon as I get the call, one of us'll jog up the street to meet her. Bonus, we should be able to tell you whether it's all clear for the jewel to make the trip, or if we'll have to change locations again because the fang-face set turned out to be a whole lot smarter than I thought."

"I must say, your cloak and dagger skills have sharply improved." Giles sounded like he was blinking in confusion.

"Hey, 3 years in Atlantic City ducking human organized crime while fighting non-human organized crime will do that for ya." Faith gave Xander a broad wink. "Seat-of-the-pants planning has become my stock in trade. Ask any of the Council boys and gals in Jersey."

Giles actually chuckled. "Reports of your Atlantic City activities have quite a following in London. One wag suggested that we paint a patina of fiction over the business and sell books to raise money for the Slayer Emergency Support Fund."

"Just thank me in the dedication, and I'll call it square," Faith magnanimously said. "Before you hang up, Harris is waving his hands. Guess he wants to talk to you."

"Put him on."

Faith quickly handed him the phone, licked her lips, and dropped to her knees.

Xander was taken by complete surprise. "Faith, what?"

Faith slurped his half-soft cock into her mouth as an answer.

"Oh. Oh!" Xander exclaimed.

"What is it?" asked Giles's worried voice.

"N-n-nothing," Xander stuttered as Faith gently used her tongue and teeth to tease him back into full hardness. "She's…she's checking to make sure that…y'know…no one's giving us the h-h-hairy eyeball."

"Your voice indicates otherwise. You sound rather jumpy, in fact," Giles said.

He really, really needed to get Faith to stop. Except she was doing that thing with her tongue and the tip of his penis that always drove him blind with want-take-have.

Xander bit his lip and forced his voice into something resembling steady. "That's because I am. I feel like I've been standing in one place too long for comfort."

Faith slid her mouth back down along his length with painful slowness.

"But before you go, I just wanted to say…" Xander coughed to prevent a groan from escaping his mouth. "I'm…I'm glad you're here. Watching…y'know…watching my back. If Buffy and Will…Willow were here…it'd be…it'd be like…y'know…" Xander bit down on his bottom lip as Faith began to hum 'Yankee Doodle' around his cock. "Old times," he finished in rush when he was sure he wouldn't be moaning in Giles's ear.

"Xander, we'll muddle through. I promise you." Giles's voice was a mix of intensity, worry, and affection. "We've been in far worse scrapes. Lord knows you know that."

Xander was too busy biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood to immediately answer. Unfortunately, all that did was make the Big O that much closer.

"Xander?" Giles asked.

"Yeah. I know. Oh, _God._ I know." Xander's voice wavered.

Faith suddenly pulled back and stuffed a fist in her mouth. Her shoulders shook with unvoiced laughter as tears rolled down her cheeks.

"It's just that I'll feel better hearing that when me and Faith are safe in London," Xander said in a relieved rush. "In the meantime, I'll be worrying about what _else_ can go wrong before we land at Heathrow."

"Between the trap at my end and Faith's quick thinking, I truly believe that a positive outcome is in sight." Giles sounded reassuring.

"Knock wood," Xander solemnly said. An evil notion struck him and he gestured at Faith to indicate that he wanted her to resume her previous position. "And Giles, I know I've said this about a million times already, but knowing you're here somehow makes this not as bad. Y'know?"

There was a long pause at the other end as Faith once more slurped down Xander's raging boner.

"That means quite a lot to hear you say that," Giles softly said.

"Look…" Xander licked his lips. "We've got to go. Before we're…y'know…spotted by the bad guys."

"Understandable. And Xander, good luck," Giles warmly said.

"Same to you," Xander said in a rush. He quickly snapped the cell phone shut before Giles could hear that long-suppressed moan escape his mouth and dropped it on the sand.

Faith paused in her work to grin up at him.

"Bitch," he affectionately said as he placed a hand on her head.

Faith was still smiling as she slid his cock back into her mouth.

Xander leaned his head back against the seawall and grinned at the night sky. Oh, the _heartbreak_ that would ensue. Giles was going to be haunted in his dreams by the voice of one nervous, one very human Xander Harris wibbling affectionately in his ear about old times and how _glad_ he was that Giles teleported across the Atlantic to help him escape a fate worse than death.

The very thought of Giles waking up in a cold sweat on a nightly basis for the rest of his life believing that had had somehow brutally failed to deliver that happy ending was almost a bigger turn-on than Faith's deep throat action now in progress.

Screw the leisurely blowjob. This called for something bigger and better.

Xander grabbed the top of Faith's head with both hands and brutally fucked her mouth until he came with a strangled yell.

* * *

"Finally."

"Finally what?"

"You actually look relaxed," Faith said with a lazy smile.

"Mmmmmm, I think I had help there."

Faith rolled over onto her side so she could give him a slow, deep kiss.

When she broke away, Xander answered her lazy smile with one of his own. He had to admit it. There was _nothing_ better than tasting himself on her tongue. "My compliments to the artiste," he said in a fake French accent.

"And don't you forget it," Faith agreed as she rolled over onto her back so she could join Xander in staring up at the stars.

Another plane passed overhead, but Xander couldn't be fussed to even make a nasty comment about it.

Once the roar had died down enough so he could be heard, Xander said, "I just want to tell you that you were brilliant."

Faith chuckled. "Y'know, I really was. You may have driven me batshit making me repeat the plan over and over and over again, but I gotta admit that it paid off."

"Don't count our jewels just yet." Xander couldn't put any heart into correcting her, but he felt it still needed to be said. "There's still a lot of work to do."

"Don't worry. I'm ready."

There was a beat of silence.

"Also, I just want to say that choosing Revere was apparently big hit with the rubes," Xander finally said.

"Toldjya. Trust the local."

Xander rolled onto his side and lifted up the upper part of his body so he could look down on Faith's placid face. "Still, I gotta wonder. Why Revere?"

"Because I knew it was the perfect place right from the get-go," Faith answered.

Xander frowned down at her and shook his head. "No. It's more than that. You've been spewing venom about this town from the second you suggested it. Hate like that? There's a reason."

"What the fuck do you care?" It sounded like a genuine question, as opposed to a warning that he back off.

Xander's frown deepened. Did he care? The logical answer was no, but that wasn't exactly right. The thing is, he didn't _not_ care. At least he didn't not care in the way he understood it.

Maybe the word he was reaching for was curious. Yes? No? Except that wasn't exactly right, either.

Maybe it he was somewhere between caring about the answer and simply being curious.

"Tell me," he finally said in a soft, encouraging voice.

Faith blinked at him, as if she wasn't exactly sure how to respond to the invitation. Her frown deepened as she lifted her hand to run a gentle finger down the right side of his face.

"Faith?" Xander prompted.

Faith's hand dropped, but her eyes didn't leave his face. "I never lived here, if that's what you're askin'."

"Didn't say you did." Xander shook his head. "In fact, I thought you were a Boston girl through-and-through."

"Boston, East Boston, Southie, Chelsea, Dorchester, Roxbury, Somerville, Everett, Quincy, and many, many more," Faith sing-songed. "Wherever mommy dearest had to move to keep one step ahead of the bill collectors."

Xander tilted his head, as if a new angle could give him more information. "Okay, so there's no obvious connection between you and Revere, but don't tell me that there _isn't_ a connection. There is. It's practically branded right on your forehead."

Faith was quiet a long time. The only sign that anything was going on in that head of hers was the way a corner of her mouth kept ticking.

"When I was 12? Maybe 13. No, it was 12," Faith finally said. "I had this Uncle Jacob. For 'uncle,' read 'mommy dearest's latest and greatest lay'. Anyway, I liked him. He was…I guess 'cause he paid attention. Knew I was there. _Saw_ me, as opposed to seein' through me, which just about all the other uncles that passed through our front door did. Anyways, this one night mommy dearest was working one of her shit jobs, and Uncle Jacob decides he's gonna take me to Revere Beach for ice cream. His treat, he says."

Xander could already see where this was going. The question wasn't, "Did he do bad things to you when he got here?" The question was, "Just how bad was it?"

"So, we get here, grab some cones, and he decides he wants to check out the old gang at The Tank. Actually, the real name was The Atlantic Lounge, but everyone called it The Tank. Fuck knows why. It had," here Faith waved at the sky, "all these whales, and fishes, and ocean things painted all over outside the building. It was really cool-looking."

"I didn't see a building like that while driving around," Xander said.

Faith shrugged. "Building's still there, but it's painted all white now. Saw the Atlantic sign hanging over the front door, but it looks like it's been shut down. Not exactly shocked. Cops probably busted the place. It was cokehead's dream back in the day."

"You mean to tell me he dragged a kid in there because he wanted to score nose candy?" Xander shook his head. "Wait. This shouldn't surprise me. Tony used to drag me into bars for 'just one drink.' Hours later there I'd be, asleep in the corner, and he'd be so drunk he was falling off his stool."

Faith's eyes took on a surprised, curious shine as she brought her hand up to caress his face. "Hunh. So you get it. Didn't expect that."

"I get it but…don't," Xander awkwardly said. He didn't quite understand what was going on. His peace of mind was completely shattered and there was a tight feeling in the pit of his stomach that seemed to be tying itself in knots. He should be furious that Faith had wrecked his good mood. He should punch her in the face because of it. He should…

What, exactly?

The uncertainty froze him in place and stayed his hands as surely as if he'd been bound up in rope.

Faith dropped her hand so it flopped onto the gritty sand. "So we go in there with me licking my cone, and there's Uncle Jacob giving hugs all around. For an hour or so, he keeps going into the men's room with this buddy or that buddy and coming out 5 minutes later. Of course, I'm a nosy little shit. I'm all, 'What are ya doin' in there?' Right? I guess I got to be a real bug about it, because he _finally_ says he's gonna take me into the men's room so I can see the party for myself."

"Oh, no," Xander whispered.

Faith paused and looked at him like she'd never seen him before.

Xander didn't blame her. He had no clue where that 'oh, no' even came from, let alone why he said it.

Faith looked beyond him, up at the stars. "So, Uncle Jacob lays me out a few lines on the bathroom sink and invites me to take a sniff." There was a bitter laugh. "Shiiiiiit. I knew what it was. Even if it weren't for the many, many shitty neighborhoods mommy dearest dragged me through, I was at that age when all those frigging D.A.R.E. vans start cruising the schools and puttin' the fear of getting high into the little tykes. But what did I do? 'Cause it was _Uncle Jacob_ tellin' me it was cool. Stupid little shit."

Xander knew the car crash was coming, and he felt powerless to do anything about it.

"My nose was on fire, my mouth was dry, my heart was beating a zillion miles a minute, I could feel my eyeballs buggin', and I was kind of zoned out," Faith said in a matter-of-fact voice. "And what does Uncle Jacob do? Drops to his knees, pulls down my pants, and goes muff diving. So there I am, riding a high and the good feelings from the pussy. There's my hips jerkin' up into his face and I'm all moaning and shit. I mean, I wanted to ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing, but I seemed to have lost my tongue or something because I couldn't actually form any words. And then…" Faith tossed up a hand a gracefully waved it in a circle. "He decided he had enough with the muff diving, whips his dick out, and climbs right on board."

Xander's eye narrowed. "This Uncle Jacob. Know where he hangs these days?"

"Nah." Faith's expression ticked into something that was almost, but not quite a smile. "Fuck knows where he is. A few months after this all happened, he headed off to greener pastures and then mommy dearest had to move. I thought about looking him up when I made Slayer, but I never did know his last name."

"Pity," Xander said through clenched teeth.

"I like to think karma struck him dead or somethin'," Faith said with wistful malice.

"Try to tell your mom?" Xander asked.

Faith shook her head in an exaggerated manner, causing her hair to flop around her head in waves across the sand. "Didn't bother. Didn't figure she'd believe me, sayin' as Uncle Jacob was just about the only fine, upstanding citizen she ever screwed. Good job. Clean record. No obvious skeletons. A real catch." Faith put a little extra venom in that last word.

Xander wasn't sure why he did it, but he reached out and brushed an errant lock of hair off Faith's forehead as he feverishly thought.

Faith seemed to be watching him, like she was trying to figure out what he was going to do next.

"You know," Xander slowly began. "We're still covered by that no-tracking spell, and we have a lot of fake I.D. _A lot_. Not to mention plenty of cash on hand. We could, I dunno, hang tight for two or three days. Maybe look in on your mommy dearest."

Faith sat up and stared at him. A smile slowly stretched across her face. A real smile, with nothing sarcastic or predatory in it.

Xander wasn't entirely sure what to make of her reaction. He was pretty sure standard operating procedure was to teach your crappy family a lesson they couldn't survive. It was embarrassing to realize that he'd been so caught up in his plan that he hadn't spared a thought for the idea that Faith might have some old scores to settle.

"Don't even know if the old whore is still alive, let alone where she is," Faith happily said. "'Sides, even if I did, I'd still tell you to forget it. She ain't worth blowing the plan for."

Xander shook his head. "We wouldn't be doing it for her."

Faith leaned forward and gently butted his forehead with hers. "I know."

* * *

"Hey, you ever think about lookin' up your sperm and egg donors?"

"Hunh?"

"You know. The 'rents. After." Faith was sitting cross-legged on the sand. She had retrieved the plate of Kelly's deep-fried fish food and was now tossing scallops into her mouth with relish.

"I thought about paying Tony and Jessica a visit. The urge lasted for about 2 weeks." Xander waved off the plate when she held it out to him. The food had to be cold and gritty by now. So not appealing.

"I bet you were working out this wicked complicated plan and everything for your visit." Faith knowingly nodded as she thoughtfully chewed on an onion ring. "Don't try to deny it. I know I'm right."

"I'll have you know that wicked complicated plan would've worked, if I could figure out a way to go round-trip between Cairo and Vegas without being missed." Xander chuckled at the memory.

"Ahhh, you wouldda worked it out." Faith sounded surprisingly sure of it, as if she were stating a simple fact.

Xander leaned back onto his elbows and watched the soothing pattern of the waves crashing against the shore. "Probably. But once I heard about the jewel, I figured I had better things to do with my time."

"Hey, if even half of what you told me about this jewel is true? I guess I don't blame you for giving them a pass," Faith said around a mouthful of food.

"Plus the fact there was no point to it." Xander twisted his head to look at Faith, "They'll do themselves in eventually. Moving to Vegas? Begging for death where those two are concerned. I'm pretty sure that by the time they die in the gutter, they'll have lost the house they bought with the insurance money and the Sunnydale Citizens' Disaster Relief Trust and pickled their livers along with their brains courtesy of all those free drinks in the casinos."

"That's what I like about you." Faith swallowed her food. "You always think about the bright side."

"Eternal optimist. That's me," Xander uncomfortably agreed. He had no idea why he went into even the little detail about his parents that he did. He could've just told her that he decided that getting his hands on the jewel was more important than chump-change revenge, yet he didn't stop there.

Why?

The mystery bothered him on a deep level.

"Hey, wassup with you over there?" Faith asked. "You're all quiet and shit. Don't tell me you're mentally rehearsing the plan _again_."

"No, nothing like that," Xander vaguely said.

Faith set aside her plate and leaned forward like she was studying him. "So?"

"What the fuck do you care?" Xander was surprised to hear that it sounded like a genuine question, as opposed to a warning that she back off.

"Tell me," Faith said, mirroring his response when she asked him the exact same question earlier.

"Why Wonderland?" Xander asked. The question took him completely by surprise. It just popped out of his mouth without introduction or warning. Yet, the moment he asked it, he realized that he needed to know.

Faith seemed more surprised than he was. "Hunh?"

Xander sat up as he continued to study the ocean. "The train station. Why call it Wonderland?"

Faith's eyebrows rose. "You mean the T-stop. In a normal part of the world, some might even call it a subway stop even though it's above ground."

"That's not an answer."

"Could be because of that's the name of greyhound race track a couple of blocks over. Could be because that's the name of the ballroom that's, like, right there on the other side of it." Faith shrugged. "Could be because of the amusement park. I dunno."

Xander leaned forward and scanned the entire length of the beach. "Amusement park? Where?"

"Ain't one here no more." Faith playfully tossed a cold fried scallop at his booted foot. "One of the guys who used to hang with my crew told us that back in the days before T.V. there was an amusement park located at the end of every T-line."

Xander thought about that. "Aren't there 4 subway lines through the city?"

"Yeah. So I guess that means a total of 8 amusement parks." Faith snorted. "Ten-to-one none of 'em could be called spectacular, let alone a wicked good time."

"But _Wonderland…_" Xander's voice trailed off.

"It's just a name."

"Yeah, but nothing around here seems like all that much of a Wonderland to me," Xander remarked.

"Hey, I thought you liked the beach." Faith patted the patch of sand next to her like it was a pet.

"If it weren't for the planes always flying overhead, the beach'd be fine," Xander answered. "But why call it Wonderland? Why not Ocean View, or Waterside, or Spandex Central? Wonderland just strikes me as false advertising."

"Oh, I don't know about that."

Xander fixed her with a questioning look.

Faith uncomfortably shrugged. "Okay, yeah. That's strange shit to hear outta me. Don't make it any less true."

"It's because of Kelly's deep-fried fish food, isn't it?" Xander uncomfortably joked.

"That's part of it. Part of it is how me and my buds back in the day would sometimes boost a car and come up here just as the sun was setting," Faith said. "Summer, Winter, didn't matter. We did it just do it and because we could, y'know?"

"I can kind of relate," Xander said.

"We'd hit up Kelly's, or one of the ice cream stands if they were open. Then we'd hit the beach, watch the waves, and have ourselves a feast." Faith looked up at the stars. "We'd be laughin', and jokin', and shooting the shit. Times like that? You could almost call us all friends."

"They weren't your friends?" Xander asked. And once again, that uncomfortable feeling that he was caring despite that fact that he simply didn't care — _couldn't _care — curled through his mind like treacherous smoke.

Faith seemed to think about his question. "Yes and no, I guess. We were all pretty much losers who couldn't get into any other social club."

Xander snorted. "I think you just summed up the Scooby membership application."

Faith narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. "I guess when you're young and stupid there's no friends like friends who ain't got no other options."

"Truer words," Xander agreed.

Faith opened her mouth to say something when her cell phone trilled. She patted down her jean jacket and retrieved her cell. "Unfamiliar number," she announced. "My money's on Zoe."

She flipped open her cell with a flick of her wrist. "Faith speaking."

There was a pause.

"Good. Be there in 10," Faith said.

She flipped her cell phone shut and grinned at Xander. "Guess who's coming to dinner?" she cheerfully announced.

Xander checked his watch. "I got 10:30."

"Yeah, we're cutting it close," Faith agreed as she got to her feet with a grunt.

As Faith began to turn away, Xander said, "Faith, remember. Make it quick and clean. We don't have time to fuck around. But most importantly, don't do anything that'll draw attention to yourself."

Faith tossed him a sloppy salute before finishing her turn and making a dash for the stairs up to the boulevard.

( 2 )


	3. Chapter 3

_Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. — from _Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

* * *

"You're never gonna guess the name of the Slayer who's comin' to meet us."

"First tell me how it went down."

"That?" Faith was chipper as she stood spread-eagled over his outstretched legs with her hands on her hips. "Smooth, quick, and clean, just like the doctor ordered. Struck as soon as she hung up from G after we gave him the all clear to send up our little courier. Never knew what hit her."

"Which car did you hide her in?" Xander asked.

"Zoe's, which was a real shitbox I might add. Since I was sittin' next to her in her car, it wasn't all that hard to shove her over the top of the front seat into the back," Faith said. "Used the handy blanket folded up on the back seat to cover her ass. I was so smooth, no one even knew I was there."

"Great work." Xander looked up at Faith's triumphant, beaming face. Everything was going according to plan, and yet…

Yet…

He felt off-balance. It wasn't that he was worried about the plan. In fact, it was the only thing he felt actually confident about. It was…

It was…

He didn't know what it was. That was the problem.

Faith dropped to her knees and straddled his thighs. As she leaned forward, Xander could see that the pupils of her eyes were dilated and that there was a slight tremor along the surface of her skin. Well, that was to be expected, what with the Slayer blood running through her veins. What stunned him was that somehow Faith was managing to ride the situation, instead of letting it ride her.

She grinned at him in an off-kilter way. "And you _still _haven't answered my riddle."

"What riddle?"

"The perfect name of the Slayer who's gonna deliver us the jewel." Faith leaned forward until their noses were practically touching.

"I'm going to take a wild stab at it and say Alice, what with us being down the street from Wonderland and all," Xander dryly remarked.

"Wrong!" Faith triumphantly announced as she settled back into the position where she was straddled across his thighs. "It's _Bunny_."

"Bunny," Xander deadpanned. "Who the hell is names their daughter _Bunny_?"

As Faith bounced in place, she looked like she was ready to jump out of her skin. "I think it's a nickname or somethin', not that it matters all that much because the fact a Slayer named Bunny is running to Wonderland with a jewel singing that she's late, she's late, she's late for a very important date just rocks my socks," she cackled.

"A Slayer named Bunny strikes fear into the hearts of exactly no one," Xander grumbled.

"But you gotta admit, perfect for our situation _and_ totally unexpected, which means it's wrapped in several shades of awesome." Faith started scratching at her forearm, as if she could somehow get to the skin through her padded denim coat and the shirt underneath.

"Rocks your socks? Several shades of awesome? You're totally high, you know that right?" Xander asked with amusement.

"Well what the fuck do you expect? You shouldda warned me about the hit." Faith paused a moment in her scratching and twitching. "Unless you didn't know because you never…" she began.

"Three that the Council didn't even know existed that I just happened to stumble across while I was traveling solo. Otherwise, I was nothing less than a perfect Council-certified Watcher to all the Slayers under my care and all the new girls the Council told me to go recruit," Xander answered.

Faith looked impressed. "No shit?"

"No shit."

"Wow." Faith stretched her arms above her head as she smiled beatifically at the seawall. "That taste was somethin', that's for sure. Don't know how you resisted for a _year _with all that Slayer pussy constantly under your nose."

"The gold rules of survival in action, Faith," Xander simply answered.

"Yeah, well, now I get why you're so hardcore about them gold rules." Faith looked at him as if she were trying to force her brain into new shapes so she could figure him out. "That's the kinda taste you could get addicted to."

Xander uncomfortably shrugged. "I didn't mean for you to be taken by surprise. I thought sure I warned you about the aftereffects."

Faith exaggeratedly shook her head no.

Xander winced. He was very sure that he did warn her at least several times as they made their way up the coast to Boston. Even so, it was his bad that he didn't remind Faith about it before she went to meet Zoe.

Wait a second. Was he blaming _himself_ for Faith's faulty memory?

He took a mental pause as he looked at the thought again.

He _was_ blaming himself for not reminding her. What's more, he really believed that he screwed up by not doing so.

The unsettled feeling once more curled through his mind as he tried to wrestle with the whiplash nature of how he kept reacting to Faith all night. It wasn't caring. It wasn't concerned. It sure as hell wasn't the beginning of anything resembling love. Whatever it was, it was emotional and he couldn't deny it. The problem was that every word he knew that came even close to describing his situation didn't really get to the truth.

"Hey, yo!" Faith waved a hand in front of his eye. "I thought you'd be jumping up and down with joy. Plan's going off without a hitch."

"I am happy," Xander quickly said. "I'm just being…cautious. I don't want to celebrate too soon."

Faith sat back on his thighs and tilted her head. "Nah, that's not it. It's that same look you had before when you asked me 'why Wonderland'."

Xander frowned at Faith without really seeing her. He didn't want to talk about it, and yet he kind of did.

"How much time do we have before Bunny meets us?" Xander asked.

"The pavilion over there in about 30 minutes." Faith jerked her head up toward the well-lit, street-level platform to their right. "Well, it's more like 20 minutes now. So spill. Are you seein' that we might have a problem with the plan? 'Cause if you do, let me know now so I'm prepared."

"No, no, no." Xander shook his head. "The plan's fine. It's just that I was just thinking about Jesse while you were off dealing with Zoe."

Faith went very still. "Jesse, hunh? Is that an old girlfriend or something?"

Xander gave her what-the-hell face. "Jesse was a guy."

Bouncy, grinning Faith returned. "No shit. With a name like Jesse, he must've been a tough motherfucker."

Xander snorted. "Not so much. Although he got really good at being a punching bag."

"With name like Jesse, I'm not surprised."

"You know what? Forget it." Xander moved to push her off his legs.

"_Sorry. _Sorry," Faith apologized as she slapped his hands away. "It's just you being so serious can make a gal nervous. You're always as serious as a fucking heart attack, but this is like 100 times more than normal."

Xander fell to frowning at her again. He really shouldn't have said anything at all. It made him too vulnerable.

"Hey, c'mon," Faith said. "We got some time to kill. Ain't like we can set the scene right this second."

Well, it was too late now. Faith had a habit of not letting things drop whenever something captured her attention. "Jesse was a friend I had in high school."

"Hunh. Don't remember him from the SunnyD," Faith said.

"He made top of the food chain before you ever came to town," Xander simply said. "Guy never held a stake in his hand, before or after he died."

"So, what happened to him?"

"I staked him."

Faith went still as she watched him with an expression of sympathy on her face.

"It was an accident." Xander uncomfortably looked toward the lit pavilion where their Bunny was due to show, mostly because he couldn't bring himself to look at Faith. "But I still did the dusty deed."

"Shit. That's rough." Faith moved off his thighs and plopped down next to him on the sand with her back against the seawall.

"To be honest I wasn't thinking about him so much," Xander said, "but something he said after he sprouted his own set of fangs."

"Was it right after he got turned?" Faith asked "'Cause if it was, you _know_ newbies have shit for brains. They'll say and do anything to go out there and start their first slaughter. Hell, you know that from experience, right?"

"I don't know if he said this right after he became a vampire or if it was after he had the first feed," Xander admitted.

"So, what'd he say?"

Xander frowned at the ocean in thought. "That he was connected."

"Connected? Connected to what?"

"Everything."

Faith screwed up her face, as if the answer didn't make sense. "Everything?"

Xander shrugged. "He said that he was connected to everything. Said he could even hear the little worms burrowing through the ground."

"Worms, hunh?" Faith tilted her head. "That's a pretty fucked up thing to tout as an actual benefit if you ask me. His sales pitch really sucked."

Xander exploded into giggles. "The scary thing is that I think he really believed that hearing the worms was the coolest thing ever."

Faith joined him in laughing. "Newbies, man. I'm telling you. Shit. For. Brains. More evidence that I'm right."

Xander's laughter suddenly died. "Do you feel connected?"

Faith made a sour face. "Connected? In what way?"

"That big ol' imprecise everything, worms included."

Faith leaned against his shoulder as she thought. "I think your bud was overselling. Or talking out his ass."

"I'm not so sure," Xander said. "He seemed so, I dunno, happy. Like he was riding a high. I think he really believed it."

Faith snorted. "Okay, so maybe he was talking to you after he made his first kill or some shit like that. Don't mean that he wasn't talking out of his ass."

"Maybe you're right," Xander quietly agreed.

Faith sat up and gently elbowed him in the ribs. "I think I know the problem. Not that it's a problem, actually. Just that _you_ think it's a problem."

"Problem?"

Faith waved over her head at the top of the seawall. "You don't hate them."

"Hate who?" Xander asked.

"_Them._ All of them." Faith looked at him. Although she was still clearly riding her high, her eyes had that clear, considering look in them that signaled she had actually thought this out. "Not saying you even like them, just that you don't hate them."

"Faith, why the hell would I go hatin' on anybody?" Xander paused and thought about it. "Okay, that's not to say that I don't have a list of people whose throats I'd rip out on sight if I crossed paths with them, but general non-directed hate? That's way too much effort."

"See? See? That's what I'm talking about." Faith pointed at him. "You don't hate them. You don't bother even trying. You find them _useful_. Sure, they're good for food, or a fuck, or as tools to get shit done. But there's no malice in it. No _hate_. I honestly think — and correct me if I'm wrong, but I know I'm not — that if some mook with a plan came along to wipe 'em all out so the demons could inherit the earth, you'd side with _them_ to stop the idiot."

Xander frowned. "Unh, Faith? That's a no-brainer. I don't know if you noticed, but without them, we'd be in deep shit. Unless you _like_ the idea of feeding off animals for the next century or three."

Faith cheekily grinned at him. "You did it."

"Because I wanted to keep my skin intact, thanks. It wasn't that I actually enjoyed it," Xander sniffed. "Okay, maybe I enjoyed killing hyenas, but I have a really good reason for that."

Faith leaned back against the wall with a smile that could almost be described as fond. "Exactly."

"Hunh?"

"You never do nothing without a reason," Faith said. "Okay, sure, it might be a shitty reason, like you losing your temper back in Providence, but it's still a reason."

Xander opened his mouth, but Faith put two fingers up to his lips. "Let me finish," she said.

Xander nodded his permission.

"I ain't saying that you've got no instincts. I mean shit. The way we are? Instinct's built in." Faith stretched like a cat. "But you? You don't hunt or kill for fun. You only do it because you gotta eat, or because it serves some plan of yours. It's like our stupid horny teenagers." Here Faith waved vaguely down the beach. "If you were 100% sure they'd be gone by the time Bunny got here? You wouldn't have done shit. You would've ignored them. Why? 'Cause shits and giggles ain't a good enough reason for you."

"I can have fun," Xander protested.

"Not sayin' you don't have fun when you're on the hunt," Faith's toothy smile took on a lascivious character, "and I ain't sayin' you don't know how to have fun with your food. I'm just sayin' you have fun with it, but you don't do it _for_ fun. See the diff?"

"I…guess," Xander uncertainly agreed.

"It's like your gold rules, the ones you keep beating into my head," Faith continued. "Rule 1: Never leave a trail of bodies that can lead people right to your front door. Rule 2: Never get involved in some dumb-ass scheme to bring on an apocalypse. And my personal favorite, Rule 3: If you break Rules 1 or 2, be prepared to fight a fuckload of pissed-off Slayers because you just got their attention."

"Those rules are important," Xander protested. "They keep you—"

"In one piece," Faith interrupted. "And you know what? You're _right_."

Xander blinked stupidly at her. Faith made it clear that she hated the gold rules. She called them stupid, made fun of them, and even rolled her eyes at them. More than once he ended up smacking her around because she got so disrespectful about it.

Faith grinned at him like she had read his mind. "I mean, take our 35 brothers and sisters all stored nice and neat in plastic baggies and stuffed in your duffle bag. Shit, let's throw in all the times we helped out some Council house while makin' our way up the coast over the past month while we're at it. How'd they end up dust, hunh? These geniuses had to know the world had changed. No more Chosen One, no more Terrible Two. It's now the Slayer Sisterhood, complete with union. It's _insane._ Here's the world just crawling with the slimy bitches, and these idiots are still partying like it's April 2003."

"So what are you saying? I'm an evolutionary leap?" Xander sarcastically asked.

"Evolutionary leap," Faith said as if she were trying out the words. "Hey, I like that. We're an evolutionary leap."

"Or how about I came up with those rules because I know how the system works," Xander said. "It's called using your brain."

Faith throatily chuckled. "So what's stopping everyone else from doing the same, hunh? They're still walking around with their dicks out just begging to be staked. Shit, you know. _We_ staked every one of those 35 assholes when they got too frisky with us because we crossed their turf."

"I'm sure there are others who know how to keep a low profile," Xander mumbled.

"Not too many," Faith sing-songed.

Xander wasn't sure if Faith was putting him on. "I thought you hated being careful."

"Won't lie. At first I thought you were being a wuss, but that was before my spectacular fuck-up back in Atlantic City. Shit, I left bodies everywhere," Faith said.

"Tell me about it," Xander grumbled.

"I mean, sure, you beat my ass bloody, dragged me back to my apartment, and wrapped me in so many chains that I thought you were gonna entomb me in metal, which pissed me the hell off," Faith said. "But after? _After_ was beautiful. You go back, find a vamp nest in Harrah's that you can blame for the whole mess, paint some of those stylized snakes on the wall so the Council would think the Cult of the Oblique Jewel had a branch in town, and then go boo-hooing to the Council-approved Watchers and Slayers about how I got jumped when I came across them making with the carnage. But the best part? They _believed_ you. They go in with stakes out, and _we_ go in with them, and dust every single one of those sad sacks. And did anyone have a clue about us? No, sir. That's pretty much when I knew you were right. You'd hid it so perfect for a fucking year that no one even thought to question things when you started yanking their chains. Shit, _I _sure as hell didn't when I jokingly invited you into my apartment. Far's I knew at the time you were still a frigging boy scout."

Xander's eye narrowed suspiciously. "So why'd you keep dissing the rules if you were on board before we even left Atlantic City?"

Faith leaned in and flicked her tongue across his lips. "Sometimes I'm a bad girl who just wants to be spanked."

Xander laughed. "You did it because you wanted an angry fuck?"

Faith began rubbing the inside of his thigh. "A brutal, angry fuck, thank you. And what d'you expect? A girl's got her needs."

Xander grabbed her wrist to stop her before things got too far. "Fair enough," he said with amusement. "But now that the secret's out…"

"Don't worry, I'll find something else to piss you off," Faith interrupted with a self-satisfied smirk. "I've been making a list."

"I can't wait," Xander happily said. He leaned forward to give her a hard, deep kiss.

When he broke away, Faith was happily licking her lips. "Think we got time to go another round?" she hopefully asked.

"I wish," Xander said as he stood up. "But the last thing we need is for Bunny to see us having fun when we should be suffering the suffering of the just."

"Fair enough," Faith easily agreed as she hopped to her feet. "And, hey, you feeling better? In general?"

Xander knew he looked surprised at the question. Faith never showed any particular concern about his well-being before.

"Yeah." Xander could feel the smile creep across his face. "Yeah, I think I am. Hunh. You and me. We're an evolutionary leap forward."

"Yeah, well, if you don't let it swell your head, I won't let it swell my head neither," Faith good-naturedly complained. "So, let's get to it. Me first. And remember. Slayer. Don't break any important shit."

"I won't," Xander promised. "And don't forget. When it's my turn, leave the right side of my face alone. I need to see. Oh, and human here. So breaking a rib or two is okay, but nothing else."

Faith snapped a nod. "Got it."

"Then let's do it," Xander said. The words were barely out of his mouth before he spun around in a round-house kick and caught Faith square in the stomach.

* * *

"Is that her, do you think?"

"Shush, Harris. You're gonna give our asses away."

"Hullo? Mr. Harris? Ms. Lehane?" the Slayer — Xander assumed it was Bunny — leaned out over the pavilion's railing and peered into the darkness.

"Look straight down," Faith ordered through her split lips.

Bunny did as she was ordered. The Slayer eyesight was clearly working for her, because she let out a gasp. "Oh my God!"

"Will you keep your fucking voice down?" Faith asked in a loud whisper. "Harris here is hamburger and I don't feel so hot myself. The last thing I need is another tangle with those assholes."

Bunny quickly looked over her shoulder, moved two feet to the right, and vaulted the railing. Despite the steep jump, she stumbled only a little bit when she landed in the sand. "What happened?" she asked as soon as she got her bearings.

"We got jumped. What the fuck do you think happened?" Faith snapped.

"Where's Zoe?" Bunny asked.

"Dead," Xander answered in a shaky voice.

"Dead?" Bunny asked.

"What the hell are you? An echo?" Faith impatiently asked. "Harris here spotted those snake-fuckers and ran his ass down to Wonderland to warn us. Problem is half of them were chasing out asses in the opposite direction, so we ended up colliding right on the damn boulevard."

"My fault," Xander whispered as he wiped blood from his chin. "This is my fault. I missed something somewhere. There's a base I didn't cover."

"Will you shut the hell up?" Faith snapped at him. "One, it ain't your damn fault. Sometimes plans just fall to shit and you know it. Two, if you insist of feeling guilty, feel it _after_ we pull our asses out of the fire."

"Are they still here, do you think?" Bunny nervously asked as she scanned the beach.

"Bet on it," Faith said.

"How many?" Xander asked in a raw voice.

"Don't do this to yourself," Faith threatened.

"How many what?" Bunny asked.

Xander allowed himself a painful cough. "How many of your people are dead?"

Faith whipped around and pointed at Bunny. "Don't answer that. Don't you _dare_ fucking answer that. He's been calculating the number of dead in that trail of bodies following us from Atlantic City to here since we started huddling on the beach like two horny teenagers."

Sadly, Bunny decided to follow Faith's orders. "You two barely look like you can stand, let alone run. How are we going to get to my car if they're everywhere?"

"We'll figure it out," Faith said. "But right now, I need to talk to G."

"They're really busy right now," Bunny timorously said.

Faith got right in the girl's face. "_Fuck _that noise. I want to talk to the Big Man. _Now_."

"Actually, I feel stupid about not thinking about this before, but with everything…actually I should use the cell first because I have an idea." Bunny began fumbling around in her pockets for her cell phone. "I guess your cells got trashed, hunh?"

"If we had still had our damn cell phones, we would've called and told you to turn your ass around and head back to the barn," Faith raged at her as she snatched the cell out of the Slayer's hand. "Give us a little credit for brains."

"Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to say you didn't. Have brains I mean," Bunny quickly apologized. "But I really think you should let me—"

Xander almost felt sorry for the little Slayer. Between the one-two punch of hearing about Zoe's untimely demise and Faith's faux rage, the poor girl didn't know whether to shit or go blind.

"Faith, can you please stopping taking it out on Bunny?" Xander interrupted. "It's not her fault that we just overwhelmed her with the suck."

Faith flipped open the cell and began scrolling through the contact list. "G's still at the Council house, yes?"

"Yes. But—" Bunny began.

"I'm not in the fucking mood, girlie," Faith snap.

Bunny, realizing that there was no moving Faith, instead turned and walked closer to Xander. "You look really awful," she sympathetically said.

"The amount of obvious in that statement is difficult to calculate," Faith snarled. "Is it possible to get more than 100%?"

Bunny hunched her shoulders and shuffled in the sand.

"So, was it worth it?" Xander bitterly asked.

"Hunh?" Bunny startled.

"Don't start Harris. Do. Not. Start," Faith threatened.

Xander painfully pulled himself to his feet. It wasn't much of an acting feat. He and Faith made sure to go the extra mile to make it look real. The bad news was the whole exercise gave him what he was sure was an obvious chubby. If Bunny noticed, he'd be in for a world of shit.

"I want to know," Xander said in a firm voice. "I've been dodging these jewel-worshipping, snake armband-wearing lunatics since the Congo. I've seen more people get killed than I care to count because of this supposedly awesome jewel. I want to know if it was worth it."

"I…don't know how to answer that," Bunny hesitantly said.

"That doesn't answer the question." Xander made a show of standing upright, before slumping back against the cement wall.

"Harris? You and I both know that Bunny here ain't got no answer for that," Faith said. "Besides, I already know that you don't think it was worth it."

"Well, I want to see it," Xander stubbornly insisted. "I want to see this jewel that got so many people killed."

Bunny looked to Faith for guidance.

"Whatever." Faith waved a dismissive hand at him. "Go on and look, not that it's gonna change your mind."

Bunny hesitated.

"Just give him the frigging jewel already," Faith snapped. "And then get your ass over here so the two of us can conference in with G."

"Shouldn't Mr. Harris also be in on the call?" Bunny asked.

The question brought Faith up short. She looked to Xander for an answer.

"As has been pointed out, I can barely breathe, let alone walk," Xander began. "I'm going to stay leaning against this wall right here."

"And again, I am not leaving your sorry ass behind," Faith angrily said in a way that more than hinted the two of them had been arguing about just this subject most of the night.

Xander ignored her outburst. "So whatever plan you guys hammer out, you're the ones that have got to execute it." He slowly sat back down onto the sand using the cement wall as support so he wouldn't sit down suspiciously quick. "Whatever happens next, I'm basically along for the ride."

Bunny wavered a moment. "I think you should know that I don't have it," she said. "I mean, I don't have the jewel on me."

Both Xander and Faith were stunned into silence.

"_What?_" Xander and Faith shouted unison.

Bunny quailed. "Lemme explain. See, I barely got out of Boston, and that's with me driving like a maniac down Storrow and playing duck-and-weave with the traffic down Route 1. Then, I had to keep backtracking to make sure I wasn't followed once I got here. That's why I was so late."

"That doesn't explain shit," Faith growled. "And I better be getting a _real good_ explanation after beatin' we just took waiting on your sorry ass."

Xander hauled himself back to his feet, much more quickly this time. He should've known. He should've _known_. The second he heard Giles's voice on the phone, he should've called the plan on account of Scooby interference, grabbed Faith, and run like hell for the estate-turned-bolt hole he set up in Mozambique.

"You don't understand," Bunny desperately tried to explain. "The cultists are _everywhere_. There were so many reinforcements pouring into the city to search for the jewel that none of us could avoid them. We can't even begin to figure out where they came from, because there definitely wasn't as many around the jewel."

Xander pinched the bridge of his swollen nose as he thought. His sources had most definitely led him astray on troop strength numbers. While he'd love to backtrack and strip the hide off the person who lied to him, he couldn't. One, multiple sources gave him numbers that were all in the same ballpark. Two, everyone he had questioned about the jewel became a meal after they no longer served his purpose.

Clearly the cult was far more organized and had far more secret reserves than he could have reasonably guessed based on the information he had.

"Since we're the ones who can't be tracked, how the fuck does the Council plan on getting the jewel out of B-town?" Faith demanded.

"Buffy's going to help," Bunny said.

Xander dropped his hand from his face as he openly stared at Bunny. "Buffy is on her way to St. Petersburg."

"Actually, she's already there. Or was before the Council's Russian contingent got their witches to teleport her here," Bunny explained. "Which is what I've been trying to tell you since I got here, neither of you would let me finish."

Faith and Xander exchanged looks. Now _Buffy_ was in Boston. They were well and truly fucked. They had to get the hell out of Massachusetts while the getting was good.

"Why the hell didn't Giles tell Faith that Buffy was playing cavalry when he talked to her earlier?" Xander asked as he slowly advanced on Bunny. He made sure to make it look like he was stumbling a little as he did so.

Faith saw what he was doing and quietly began moving closer to Bunny from the opposite side.

"He didn't get the idea until after he talked to Faith and Zoe," Bunny said. "He figured that since everyone _knew_ that Buffy was headed for St. Petersburg, the Council's leak wouldn't be able to warn the bad guys. So, anyway, that's why the emergency teleport to Boston."

"That's smart," Faith agreed.

"Anyway, Mr. Giles gave Buffy the jewel and it was off to the races," Bunny said. "In fact, she's—"

Bunny never got to finish that sentence.

* * *

"Why the fuck are you still dragging that duffle bag around? Dump it."

"It's got our fake documentation, bank accounts, anda whole lot of cold, hard cash."

"On second thought, I love the fact you're still holding the bag," Faith said as she and Xander raced down Revere Beach Boulevard to the Wonderland station parking lot.

Xander could feel the Slayer blood working its way through his system. Already he could feel his ribs knitting together with an electric buzz, and the deep bruises in his muscles fade. His skin seemed to tingle all over as the cuts and scrapes left behind by Faith's lovely hands started to heal over. To the human eye, he'd still look like holy hell, but much of the damage was more cosmetic than anything else.

However, the normal, buzzing high that usually came with a Slayer meal was curiously absent. Maybe it was because he only got half-a-Slayer, or maybe it was because of his injuries. Either way, he didn't much care. His head was still mostly clear.

"Still mystified why you bothered dragging Bunny's dead ass down near the dead teens and ripped open 5 bags of vamp dust and spread all around them," Faith complained. Luckily, the giggling high that had accompanied her feeding from Zoe had disappeared and she was focused. Well, she was focused enough to complain about their situation, at least.

"To set the scene," Xander shortly explained.

"_Fuck_ setting the scene. We need to skedaddle," Faith argued.

"Look, going by the fact we so easily got the drop on Bunny, it's a pretty good bet that the Council doesn't know about us," Xander began.

"_Yet_."

"Okay, yet. They probably don't know about us _yet_. And we still have that no-tracking spell on us, which the Council can't lift unless one of their witches convinces us to step into a circle so they can reverse it," Xander skidded to stop next to Faith when they were across the street from the trash-strewn Wonderland station parking lot. "We've got a good shot of getting out of this with at least our hides intact."

"But why bother with the fake massacre?" Faith demanded.

Xander grabbed Faith's arm and yanked her close. "Because the longer we can keep the Council guessing about what really happened, the more distance we can put between us and them before they finally figure out the truth. If they start with the assumption that we've been taken captive—"

"They'll waste a lot of time looking in all the wrong places," Faith finished for him. "Got it."

"Okay. Now pick a car." Xander jerked his head to indicate the parking lot across the street. "Any car. I know we've got limited options this time of night, but I'll go with your expertise."

Faith looked like she was carefully considering her options. Clearly the Zipcar was out, since Giles knew they were driving one. Zoe's beater of a car was out, since its make and model was already known by the local Council house. As for Bunny's car, they didn't even know where it was parked.

Unfortunately, she didn't look any happier with any of the other choices.

Faith suddenly checked her watch. "Since we took the time to change into clothes that weren't bloody, I say we go with the T."

"The T," Xander deadpanned. "Please tell me you're not seriously suggesting we make our getaway using _mass transport_."

"Stealing a car attracts attention sooner or later," Faith thoughtfully said. "When the Council comes up here in a day or two to investigate where our missing asses got to, a report of a stolen car'll be a big ol' red arrow pointing at us. If we're gonna keep the Council guessing, I say we go with a nice, anonymous, people-mover that's cash-only for fares."

Xander blinked at Faith as he took in her advice. Again she had surprised him with her seat-of-the-pants thinking. Clearly he had more of a goldmine on his hands than he originally thought.

"Before I say yes, how difficult would it be to get to the airport doing it your way?" Xadner asked.

"Prepare to celebrate, 'cause _this _is the line that'll get us there." Faith happily grinned. "It's just 6 or 7 stops from here and maybe a 20 minute ride. Probably less this time of night."

Xander grabbed her by her shoulders and passionately kissed her. "You're a genius!"

She swatted his arm. "About time you figured it out."

"So, when's the next train?" Xander asked.

Faith checked her watch again. "If I had to guess, the last train out will be here in a little over 15. And just so you know, I'm playin' that estimate as being closer than I really think it is, just to be safe."

"Okay. All we need is an excuse to explain why we've been beaten," Xander said.

"Bar fight," Faith automatically answered.

"Nah. That'll make someone want to call the cops if they hear that." Xander paused as he thought. "Domestic."

Faith made a face. "Shit. I gotta be the damsel, don't I?"

"Hey, I'll be the damsel if you want," Xander said with a shrug. "But there's a risk that a guy my size isn't going to inspire as much sympathy."

"Fine!" Faith threw up her hands. "You're rescuing me from my bastard, dope-dealing husband."

"We'll work it. Let's go," Xander ordered as he scooted across the boulevard.

As they landed in the parking lot flooded with its dirty, yellow lighting, Faith stopped him with a grip on his arm. "Before we jump the turnstiles, I'm thinking we need to follow the original plan here, too."

Something in Xander's gut told him it would be a bad idea. It was probably better if they just make their way to the platform and leave their 3 bodies tucked in the cars. "I don't know," he began.

"Look, if they find those two mooks from the Shirpwreck Lounge in the trunk of our Zipcar, and a dead Slayer in the backseat of her car covered with a blanket, they're _definitely_ going to figure out that we ain't victims," Faith said.

"Can we pull this off in 10 minutes?" Xander asked.

"Super-speed, super-strength…what do you think?" Faith asked.

Even though some instinct screamed at him to nix the idea, he had to admit that Faith made too much sense. "Okay, fine. You arrange our Slayer like she was nailed mid-dusting between her car and ours so she won't be immediately obvious to anyone walking by. I'll check to make sure that the parking attendant is gone for the night."

Faith took off for Zoe's beater while Xander raced to the tiny wooden shack at the entrance of the parking lot. Once he reached it, he slowed down to walk and casually passed by the glass enclosure in the front. Even though it looked dark and empty, Xander stopped and peered into the interior to be sure. After straining his neck this way and that so he'd see the compartment from every angle, he relaxed. The attendant had left for the night.

Once he knew the coast was clear, Xander unzipped his duffle and retrieved one of the bags of vampire dust and one of the stakes. He opened the bag, and dipped the tip of the stake in the dust before shaking out the Ziploc so the dust would be carried away on the wind. He then repeated the process with two more bags. When he was done, he dropped the stake to the ground and shoved the empty Ziplocs back into his duffle. Any Council investigator would look at the planted physical evidence and conclude that 3 vampires had been staked in the immediate vicinity.

Xander brushed off his hands with a chuckle. This trick had served him more times than he could count in Africa. He had laid down so many false evidence trails so often over the past year that it had become almost second nature.

As Xander crossed the parking lot to get to Faith, who was waiting by the Zipcar's open trunk, he'd occasionally stop and shake out a Ziploc bag of vampire dust or two to make it look like that Zoe was killed in battle that had raged all over the parking lot. Along the way, he dropped two more dust-infused stakes to the ground. These he kicked in randomly different directions.

"You know, it's a wonder our girl wasn't killed sooner," Faith said as he approached. She toed the top of the dead Slayer's head as she spoke.

"Why's that?"

"Back door on the other side was broken," Faith answered.

Xander froze as a wave of paranoia hit him. "How recently?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Faith asked.

Xander glanced at the well-lit station.

"Will you stop worrying?" Faith asked with irritation. "Ain't no one watching us at all. I saw one big beefy chick in a T uniform, but she's moved off to the far side of the station. No way she can see what we're doing from over there."

"But the broken lock on the car…" Xander began.

"A shit car like this? The stunner is that it's only _one_ lock that's broken," Faith insisted. "So, how many vamps did our girl get?"

"I'm thinking 6 before she went down," as Xander reached into the duffle bag.

"Guess that makes her super Slayer," Faith joked.

"No, it's because I have 6 bags left and I want to dump them all," Xander replied.

"Fair enough. Where do you want me to dump the trash from our Shipwreck Lounge meals?" Faith asked as she peered down into the trunk. "Ain't like we can wrap them in this plastic tarp and carry them like they're in an oversized doggy bag."

Xander didn't bother looking up as he contaminated a stake with the leftover vampire dust. "Find two corners where it looks like a vampire could hang out for a quiet lurk while watching the parking lot. Drop one in each spot. Cover one with the tarp, and the other one with any old trash you can find."

Faith looked around. "How hidden do you want the bodies? From just casual passers-by? Or no finding them until they begin to smell?"

"The more hidden they are, the better I like it," Xander answered.

"On it," Faith said. She lifted one of the bodies out of the trunk, flung it over her shoulder in a fireman's carry, and sped off for a shadowed area to the lee of the station.

As Faith strategically placed the bodies, Xander rearranged Zoe's body so she'd be harder to spot from anyone casually walking by, dropped the dust-contaminated stake near the Zoe's body, and finished dumping the last of the dust. He then took his elbow and smashed in the passenger side door of the dead Slayer's car. He glanced around the parking lot and considered doing the same to one of the random cars that still dotted the lot, but since he didn't know if they were alarmed, he decided not to risk it.

"All set," Faith announced as she slammed the Zipcar's trunk shut.

"That was fast."

"Hey, we're on a schedule here," Faith said. She checked her watch. "Five minutes and counting."

"Let's roll," Xander said. "And Faith, remember…"

"I know, I know. Don't kill anyone unless you gotta because the last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves." Faith paused to give him an affectionate smack across his shoulder blade. "Spoilsport."

( 3 )


	4. Chapter 4

_Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. — from _Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

* * *

"Where's the T person you mentioned?"

"Probably around the corner outside sneaking a smoke."

"I don't like this." Xander suspiciously looked around. "Leaving the station unattended like that? Anyone could just jump the gates."

"And this bothers you why?"

"On principle? It doesn't," Xander answered. "But as a practical matter? It seems out of place."

"Please. We're talkin' a state employee workin' the late shift. She don't give a flying fuck if anyone jumps the gates," Faith said as she slid something called a Charlie Card — which the locals bought from automatic dispensers in lieu of tokens or using actual money — into a slot. The gates opened and she pranced through.

"I dunno. It's just I keep having a serious case of this-is-wrong-ability," Xander said as he slid his Charlie Card into the slot.

"Look around you." Faith gestured like she was a model on the _Price is Right_. "The station's pretty open. If something was wrong, we'd see it."

"And right now I'm seeing a missing T employee," Xander said as he joined Faith.

Right on cue, there was a squeal of brakes and a flash of electric light as a grimy blue and white subway train rounded the corner and crawled into the station.

"See? Nothin' to worry about," Faith cheerfully said.

Xander glanced over his shoulder. With the exception of Faith and himself, the station was completely deserted. Faith was probably right. He was jumping at shadows because he knew that both Giles and Buffy were no more than a half-hour car ride away. He was fine when it was just Giles. He probably would've been fine if it was just Buffy, even. But the two of them together? The very idea was worrying.

The two-car train came to halt on the opposite track with a loud, rumbling screech that made Xander wince.

As the train opened its doors to disgorge the handful of passengers, a pair of chimes bonged from a speaker overhead and announced that the train had arrived at Wonderland, the last stop on the line.

Faith and Xander tensed as the passengers scattered. Xander knew that every plan had a certain amount of calculated risk. Spreading the bodies around the beachside parking lot of the station, even though they were mostly hidden, was one such risk. In the original plan, he and Faith would already be long gone using Bunny's car. Unfortunately, he had let his fury get the better of him and he dove in for the kill before he had a chance to find out where her car was.

All he could do now was hope like hell that no one let the world know they had spotted a dead body by letting out a blood-curdling scream. If the cops suddenly showed, he and Faith would have to make a run for it. Getting embroiled in a murder investigation because the cops viewed the pair of them as potential witnesses was sure to attract the kind of attention that would be inimical to his and Faith's long-term well-being. Needless to say, he was tensed to grab Faith and run while the train made its lumbering turnaround maneuver, which seemed to involve pulling out of the station, switching tracks, and then returning to the station down a different set of tracks located next to the platform where they stood.

Luckily for them, none of the departing passengers seemed eager to stick around, probably not a surprise given the lateness of the hour, nor did they seem to pay their surrounding environment any attention beyond the bare minimum of making sure they weren't approached by questionable characters. Some headed for the beachside parking lot and went directly to their cars, none of which had a clear line of sight in the space between the Zipcar and Zoe's abandoned car or the body on the ground. Other passengers crossed the catwalk over the tracks and headed for the parking lot located behind them, which faced the flat, blasted landscape of an empty street and another parking lot located on the other side.

When the train settled to a stop on the tracks in front of them, the double chimes sounded again and announced that this was the Blue Line inbound from Wonderland with a final stop in Bowdin, wherever the hell that was.

The doors flew open with a hiss, the train's engine fell ominously silent, and the interior lights in cars slightly dimmed.

"How long is it going to just sit on the tracks like that?" Xander hissed in Faith's ear.

"Probably a few minutes. Don't worry. It'll be outta here soon enough," Faith hissed back.

A conductor stepped out of the train and began fishing around in his pockets.

"Okay. We say nothing unless he asks," Xander whispered in Faith's ear as he placed an arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the rear car. "But if he _does_ ask, let me do most of the talking."

As the conductor flipped a cigarette in his mouth in clear violation of the no smoking signs splashed all over the station, he spotted the pair of them walking down the platform. He looked up with widened eyes, unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth and unflicked Bic forgotten in his hand.

Xander tried to ignore him and guide Faith into the last car.

"Hey, you need me to call the cops?" the conductor called out to them.

Right on cue, Faith began to wail. "No. No police. No, please."

"Go inside the car," Xander told her with a glance at the inconvenient Good Samaritan.

As Faith did as she was told, Xander approached the conductor.

"Family trouble?" the conductor asked as he took in Xander's bruised face.

"My sister's dickhead soon-to-be ex-husband," Xander explained.

The conductor strained his neck to get a glance through the window at the back of Faith's bowed head and slumped shoulders, before looking back at Xander.

"It's been a long time in coming," Xander said. The worried expression on his face was real enough, at least. "She was too scared to leave on her own, so I flew out here to get her." He let loose with a bitter laugh. "He and his dope-dealer buds caught us while we were sneaking out the door."

"Fuck," the conductor quietly swore. "You really should call the cops. You two look like you need a trip to Mass General. Especially you, with that eye patch."

"This? Old motorcycle injury," Xander said as he waved at the left side of his face. He realized with a sinking feeling that without the jewel, his dreams of getting a new eye would just have to go by the wayside for now.

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't realize." The conductor winced. "Either way, my point still stands."

"My sister doesn't want cops," Xander insisted. "If she files charges, she'll have to stick around for at least a day or two. She just wants out of his reach. Hell, it isn't like she hasn't filed restraining orders against the asshole before. He walked through them like the paper they are."

The conductor studied Xander's face. Whatever he saw there seemed to convince him. "Where are you going?"

"I-I-I don't want to say," Xander stuttered.

"No, I mean what stop."

"Whatever stop that'll get me to Logan. I've got reservations to get the hell out of this state on the first available flight on United," Xander said.

"You need to get off at Airport," the conductor said.

Xander grinned. "Okay, that's an obvious, easy-to-remember name. Thanks for letting me know. I didn't get a chance to look at the system map, and my sister's on the verge of hysteria so I was afraid to ask her."

"Okay, tell you what," the conductor checked his watch, "I've got to wait here at least for another 3 minutes or so. I'll stay right here and watch for sketchy characters. Once we leave the station, I'll just leave this car closed and won't let anyone in with you two until I get to Airport."

Xander resisted the urge to hug the man. "Thank you," he said with obvious relief. "Right about now, I'm getting neck strain from looking over my shoulder. But won't you get in trouble?"

"This time of night on a weeknight?" The conductor paused to light his cigarette. "I don't get enough passengers to fill one car, let alone two. Don't worry about it."

"I can't tell you how much this means to us," Xander gratefully said. "The fewer people who see us leaving Revere, the better."

"Don't mention it. And I mean that literally, because it could be my ass." The conductor held up a finger. "But if I see anyone suspicious heading this way, I call the police. No ifs, ands, or buts. A bloody fight in the station, especially a domestic, is more than my job's worth."

"Thank you," Xander softly said as he went to join Faith in the car.

Faith looked up as he passed through the door. "Well?"

Xander plopped down in the seat next to her, put the duffle bag on the empty seat on the other side of him, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "We're good, sis."

"Mmmmm, I think I like that kind of good, clean family fun much, much better," Faith purred as she slid a hand over his thigh.

"I gotta admit, I'm liking the idea myself," Xander promised. "You deserve a reward for that Emmy-worthy turn at playing damsel. Maybe a little brotherly love will soothe the bruised ego."

"As long as you promise that next time you'll be the damsel I'll call that a deal," Faith said.

"Provided we get out of here okay and that there will be a next time," Xander said as he glanced over his shoulder. Aside from the smoking conductor standing sentry outside their car, Wonderland may as well be a tomb for the quiet dead. He added, "I have some even better news, too. Our knight in a shining civil servant uniform is going to keep this car closed until we reach the Airport stop. So there'll be no unexpected visitors."

"Now that's a hook, line, and sinker job," Faith said.

"Okay, from here on out, the plan's the same," Xander said. "As soon as we hit the airport, we head for the north cargo area near Terminal E. In case we get separated—"

"Head for Lot C-49, DHL terminal, and wait by the custom crate holding our custom-built coffin built for two that locks on the inside," Faith finished for him.

"Don't wait. Get _in_ the coffin," Xander corrected her.

Faith studied him a moment. "You'd wait for me."

"Well, _yeah_." Xander uncomfortably squirmed. "I have to. It's in the rulebook."

"The rulebook you wouldn't read even if you knew it existed." Faith smirked at him. "Fuck it. I'll wait."

"_Faith,_ please listen to me," Xander said. "We're cutting it really fine. That crate's scheduled to be loaded into the cargo hold by 2 a.m., give or take. No matter what happens, make sure you're in that coffin before then."

Faith pulled away and crossed her arms. "I'll _wait,_" she insisted with a glare at him,

Xander blinked at her like he'd never seen her before. Small defiances from Faith were nothing new, but it was always about stupid shit or because she knew it pressed his buttons. This was a defiance of a completely sort and he wasn't entirely sure how he should react.

He should probably do something to make her follow his orders, or at the very least listen to reason. However, he knew from experience that nothing short of violence was going to get her to budge. Since he just told the one witness to their escape that she was running from a wife-battering asshole, he pretty much suspected that if the "brother" showed himself to be not much better a call to 9-1-1 would be made.

Besides, he wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to change her mind.

"Fine. Have it your way," Xander finally said.

"Goody," Faith said as she settled back into the crook of his arm. "Now how are we gonna entertain ourselves on a 12-hour flight? 'Cause I got some ideas."

"I'm sure you do," Xander murmured as he kissed the top of her head.

"Pretty sure we're gonna be _starved_ when we land," Faith remarked.

"So we'll grab a few snacks before we hit up a few war zones," Xander said.

Faith sat up and gave him a questioning look. "We ain't gonna go straight to your pad Mozambique?"

"Estate," Xander corrected her. "And 'straight to Mozambique' is a relative term. We've got to cross half the continent to get there. And since we're passing through some nifty little wars along the way…" Xander's voice trailed off into a shrug.

Faith made a face. "Why do we wanna mess with that shit?"

"To enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet."

Faith perked up. "Yeah? As in totally off the hook?"

"Off the hook, off the leash, and running wild," Xander promised. "Sometimes when all that self-control would get to me, I'd swing through one or two to take off the edge."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Faith happily said as she settled back into the crook of his arm. "Now I'm gonna hafta do somethin' extra special for you when we tuck ourselves into our deee-lux flight accommodations. I'm thinkin' it's a good thing we're both really flexible."

The conductor stuck his head into the car. "Okay, we're heading out now. You two okay?"

Faith buried her face into Xander's shoulder, probably to hide her beaming smile. "We will be," Xander said as he composed his expression. He turned to the conductor with a suitably relieved, but somber look on his face. "Hey man, thank you for this."

The conductor's answering smile sad. "Yeah, well. I had a sister once, too." Without another word, the conductor turned away and headed off down the platform to the first car.

"Shiiiiiiit," Faith giggled. "We lucked into that one."

The train shuddered to life. The lights briefly flickered before kicking up a couple of lumens in brightness. The double chimes bonged from the speaker in the ceiling and the automated voice announced, "This is the Blue Line from Wonderland with the last stop in Bowden. Next stop, Revere Beach station."

During the announcement, Xander's shoulders began to relax. True, he didn't have the jewel in his hands, but it looked like they would make a clean getaway. While its loss stung, to say nothing of losing access to its varied magical uses, he still had resources to protect himself and Faith from the Council for at least a little awhile. Between the no-tracking spell, his ready access to cash and sheltered bank accounts in tax-free havens, and the numerous forms of fake identification he had for both them in his duffle, they could stay under the radar long enough for him to get his hands on some new, powerful object d'magic that would put a more comfortable barrier between them and a Council set on revenge.

As the doors began to hiss closed, a blur shot through the rapidly narrowing opening and flung itself into a seat on the opposite side of the train's aisle.

"Hey guys!" it chirped.

There was a stunned moment of silence as the train jerked forward, and then began to crawl out of Wonderland station.

"Buffy?" Xander exploded with surprise, a split second before Faith exploded with her own, "B?"

Buffy was sprawled on the bench a little way down from Xander's right near a door that faced out onto the outbound tracks. "Where _were_ you guys? You were supposed to meet me at the Wonderland Ballroom. Well, actually, not there, but that narrow alley between the ballroom and the train station. Didn't Bunny tell you? I was waiting by her car there." Her bright grin slightly dimmed. "Speaking of which, where is she?"

Faith tensed next to him, and Xander tightened his hold around her shoulders to signal that she needed to wait. The way Buffy was seated meant that every single limb was essentially pointed in their direction. If they attacked now, all she'd have to do is sweep out a foot to knock them both off balance. In that time it took for them to recover, she could easily get a stake in her hand.

Once Buffy's beloved Mr. Pointy made an appearance all it would take was one mistake to turn one or both of them into dust motes.

Buffy began to frown. "Also, you two also look really awful. What happened?"

Thankfully, Faith stepped into the breach while Xander furiously considered their options for attack.

"We got jumped," Faith said. Clearly she was falling back on the story she told Bunny.

"Jumped?" Unfortunately, this news seemed to make Buffy even more alert than she already was. "When?"

Judging from the way Buffy was acting, she didn't know. That was good news, at least. The bad news is that he and Faith would have to time their attack just right. It had to be at a point where Buffy was distracted or she dropped her guard. If worse came to worst, they could string her along until they reached Logan, then "get separated" from her somewhere in the passenger terminals, and simply disappear. Once they were out of sight, Buffy would have no way of tracking them.

A fight in the narrow confines of the subway car or flight across Logan airport to the DHL terminal. It was a hell of a choice, and both were fraught with peril. He was pretty sure they'd be able to manage one or the other. After all, it was two of them against one clueless her. Even so, Xander still didn't like the odds, but they were the best odds he was going to get.

"On the beach," Faith haltingly explained. "They attacked us on the beach and…B, she's dead. I'm sorry."

Buffy sat up and her chin trembled. "Bunny's dead?"

The train began to decelerate as the double chimes bonged overhead and the voice announced, "Next stop, Revere Beach station."

Xander faked a coughing fit. He put a little painful rattle in it for good measure. "The sand on the beach. I can't seem to clear my throat," he said in a trembling, raw voice. "Bunny pushed me down in the sand and dove into the middle of them to try and keep them away from me. They grabbed her and ran."

"I tried to follow 'em, B, but my ankle's fucked," Faith helplessly waved at her left foot. "Harris may look like hamburg, but at least he can walk. He had to carry my ass down the boulevard."

Xander suddenly realized that he had to at least mention the jewel. Even though they knew Buffy had it, Buffy didn't know they knew. "We lost both a Slayer _and_ the jewel in one night because we weren't fast enough," Xander said. "Buffy, I'm so sorry about this. You don't know how much."

The train jerked to a sharp stop. The double chimes bonged and the voice overhead informed them that they had arrived at Revere Beach station.

"Believe me when I tell you, it's been a hard night all around," Buffy quietly said. "As far as I'm concerned, one Mr. Xander Harris doesn't have to apologize for anything. And before you beat yourself up too hard, I think you should know that—"

Xander interrupted her, since he already knew what her big revelation was. It was more important that he play his part to perfection, and that meant guilt. Lots and lots of guilt. If he could turn her into consoling-friend-Buffy, her guard would drop and he and Faith would have a better chance of getting the jump on her.

"Yes I do," Xander insisted. "I was the one that found out that the long-lost Oblique Jewel was not as lost as everyone thought and then went off and blabbed to the Council about it." He sniffed as he rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth and looked studiously Buffy's feet. Damn. They were planted on the floor.

"You know once you found out you couldn't let that go," Buffy soothed. "I mean, the way you found out meant there was always a chance some big bad wanna-be had heard about it at the same time. For all the Council knows, some big bad wanna-be is still after it. It's the only way to explain the ramped-up security."

"I thought G said there was a leak," Faith said.

Buffy raised an eyebrow, and Xander felt his hopes sink once again. With one little statement, Faith had managed to push Buffy back into business mode.

"Yeah, that's what he told me," Buffy agreed. "Not sure I want to believe it."

The double chimes bonged and the automated voice announced, "Now leaving Revere Beach station. Next stop, Beachmont."

"I'll be honest, I think I like your theory more than Giles's," Xander said as the train pulled out of the station. "A jewel with that kind mojo would totally be on every big bad's Amazon wish list."

"I thought all it did was healing and protective shit," Faith said with a frown at Xander. "Least that's what Harris told me."

"Well, yeah. That's pretty much all it does. It's like the Swiss Army knife of magical jewels," Buffy agreed. "Except not the cheap kind you get in stores for $19.99. It's more like the kind that you have to special order for $200 because it does everything short of doing your dishes and making your bed."

Faith and Xander quickly exchanged what-the-hell looks. Quippy Buffy right after hearing about the death of a Slayer? Something was Not Right. Xander turned his gaze back on Buffy and tensed to spring so he'd be ready when she gave him an opening. He could sense Faith next to him doing the same thing.

"Sorry, sorry." Buffy waved her hands. "Still loopy from the teleport. I haven't slept for more than a day at this point."

"Yeah, that's pretty obvious," Xander carefully said as he removed his arm from around Faith's shoulders.

Buffy pinched at the chain that as hanging from her neck and lifted it up to her chin.

Xander's eye got wide. "The jewel," he said with near-reverence.

"It's…it's…" Faith shook her head. "Wow."

"I'm glad you guys see its specialness, because I have to tell you that it's lost on me." Buffy frowned at them as she dangled the chain from her pinched fingers. "All this mess for one little jewel that's not even the size of my thumbnail. I mean, seriously? This is what we're fighting over?"

Xander cleared his throat. "Like you said, it's the Swiss Army knife of magical jewels."

"You can't even use it as a weapon." Buffy pouted as she let it drop. The jewel fell against her sweater and glimmered tantalizingly under the subway car's industrial light. "It's all blah-blah-blah protective, except you have to keep renewing the protective spells on a regular basis and fuel it by either killing someone or giving it a sliver of your soul every time you use it, so I'm thinking total bust. Then there's the blah-blah-blah healing bit, but every one of those spells has a major drawback of some kind, too."

The train began to slow. The double chimes bonged overhead and a voice announced, "Next stop, Beachmont."

Xander took advantage of the interruption and forced himself to focus on what was important. The primary objective was to get away from Buffy in one piece. If they got their hands on the jewel — or, better, ripped it off her corpse — it would be a bonus. However, things were too uncertain, and Buffy's mood too volatile, to be sure that they'd actually win if he and Faith tried to make a power play for it. He was not about to risk his hide or Faith's on what could easily turn into a suicide run.

"Don't look at me," Xander bitterly said as his eye fixed on the jewel. "If you're asking me whether it was all worth it, the answer is no."

"He's been like this all night," Faith said, once again falling back into the groove she had with Bunny. "While the whole thing's been a clusterfuck since Atlantic City, at least we got it now, right? Better us than the other side."

"Yeah, I guess," Buffy quietly said. "But with so many people killed or hurt, I have to wonder…"

"B? Could you please stop encouraging Harris to feel even _more_ guilty?" Faith asked with irritation as she shifted in her seat, no doubt to improve her angle of attack if she had to make a move. "Could you at least wait until we get to London before you start with that shit?"

"It's just that I look at you two and I'm beginning to get the idea just how much this jewel cost us," Buffy said.

That's when Xander _knew_.

He launched himself from his seat just as Buffy jumped up, grabbed a nearby floor-to-ceiling pole, and swung around it like she was a stripper going for a big kick-off of a finish. Her leading foot caught Xander square in the left cheek sending him flying down the aisle. He slammed into the front wall with enough force that his teeth clicked together.

Right, gloves off.

Xander brought out the game face and flipped to his feet just in time for the train to jerk to a stop and he was thrown off balance.

The double chimes bonged and the voice announced, "Beachmont stop."

Xander righted himself and saw that Faith and Buffy were already trading blows in the middle of the aisle.

"You know," Buffy said, "I'm not sure if you're the smartest stupid vampires I've ever met, or the stupidest smart vampires I've ever met."

Buffy and Faith did a complicated _pas de duex _that ended with Buffy's back to him. Xander grinned as he launched himself down the aisle to take advantage of the situation. Just then, Faith ducked low and swung out a kick that was angled to catch Buffy in the back of her knees.

Buffy leapfrogged over Faith and clumsily landed on the other side. "On second thought, I'm just going to go with this: you're vampires that are so smart that you're stupid. Does that work for you? Because that definitely works for me."

Faith spun around to face Buffy in full game face, just as Xander reached Faith's side.

The train gave a hard jerk forward as the double chimes bonged and the voice announced, "Now leaving Beachmont. Next stop, Suffolk Downs."

"Oh, crap," Buffy declared as she stumbled a little in the wake of the train's sudden movement.

Faith and Xander launched themselves at her in unison.

Buffy leapt straight up and grabbed the metal bars that ran parallel overhead down the length of the subway car and swung her legs forward in another kick. Both Xander and Faith ducked in unison to avoid the double blow. Buffy's legs and feet sailed over their heads. Next thing Xander knew, he heard a thump and a grunt behind him.

As Xander spun around to prevent a potential attack from behind, he got tangled up with Faith as she also turned to look for the Slayer.

"This is fucking ridiculous," Faith hollered.

"The aisle's on the small side," Xander agreed as he fixed a yellow-eyed glare on the grinning Buffy. "A shoulder-to-shoulder act down the aisle isn't gonna work here."

"I'm on point," Faith said as her feral grin lit up her game face and she stalked a few steps in front of Xander. "Been waitin' to put this bitch down for years."

"So I'm guessing that joining hands and singing 'Why Can't We Be Friends?' is out, hunh?" Buffy said. "How about 'Kumbaya?' I'll totally go with that one if you'd prefer to go with that one."

Xander paused and forced himself to take a mental step back and think. For all the tussling around the subway car, Buffy had _yet_ to pull out Mr. Pointy. Either she had back-up waiting somewhere along the subway line or…

Or…

_No!_

"Faith, wait," Xander desperately ordered.

"Fuck that noise," Faith snarled as she stalked closer to Buffy. "Bitchy here is keeping her wooden fangs sheathed. I ain't about to pull my punches with an advantage like that."

"You know what?" Buffy said as she slowly backed away from Faith's advance. "The jewel? _Soooooo_ not worth it."

What happened next happened so quickly that time became a blur.

Buffy ripped the jewel off her neck and shouted, "Catch!"

Faith automatically reacted to the throw. Her hand shot out; either to slap the jewel away or to catch it, Xander couldn't tell.

Xander surged forward to stop her. "Faith, no!"

The jewel came into contact with Faith's outstretched open palm and she stiffened as if she were in shock. Xander desperately reached out to snatch the jewel away before it finished whatever Buffy had set it to do, but the moment his fingers came into contact with it, an electric jolt shot up his spine and he was nailed in place.

The train began to slow. The double chimes bonged, and a voice said, "Next stop, Suffolk Downs."

Buffy staggered as the train made a series of jerks and she reached out to grab a metal pole to stop herself from pitching backwards. Her eyes were narrowed and suspicious, as if she expected the pair of them to drop the jewel and come after her.

"What the fuck?" Faith asked.

Xander desperately tried to move, but it was no good. From the neck up, he was fine. But from the neck down, he may as well have been a marble statue that had been crazy-glued to the floor of the train.

This was a fucking nightmare.

Buffy's mouth dumbly dropped open as she straightened back up to her full height. "Hunh. It worked. I was so sure I cast that wrong."

"The captive spell? You had to kill somebody to make this work," Xander said.

"I didn't kill anyone," Buffy defensively said.

Faith, who was thankfully on his good side, hooted with laughter. "You gave up a sliver of your soul? For penny-ante shit like this? Sure you got enough to spare?"

The barb struck home and Buffy winced.

Xander's yellow predator's eye narrowed in thought. He could use that reaction to his advantage. He wasn't sure how just yet, but he was very certain he could make her sorry for giving up even the sliver she did.

The train jerked to a full stop. The doubled chimes bonged and the voice announced that they were finally at Suffolk Downs.

"You know, this is total irony," Buffy said in a shaking voice. "Giles had me teleported in because he was worried _sick_ about Xander."

Xander blinked. "What? You're here because of _me_?"

"He told me that when he talked to you earlier, that your voice was shaking. How you kept stuttering, losing your train of thought, and how there were all these pauses in between words. Giles said he'd never, ever heard you sound as scared as you did tonight." Buffy jerked toward them a couple of steps like she was a broken robot. "You way overplayed your hand."

"A blowjob?" Faith looked as if she wanted to smack her forehead Homer Simpson-style. "We got fucking busted because the Head Asshole confused the sound of you getting a blow job with you being scared?"

Buffy rushed at Faith with her fist raised, but she stopped herself just short of throwing the punch. She whirled on Xander, "Giles was _terrified_ for you. He was _terrified_ you were going to die and he was willing to do _anything_ to save you. God!"

The train jerked forward as the double chimes bonged and the voice announced, "Now leaving Suffolk Downs. Next stop, Orient Heights."

"Will you just fucking dust us already?" Faith asked. "You got our asses in a sling. There's no fucking point in subjecting us to your personal trauma and making our frigging eardrums bleed before you break out the stakes."

Buffy threw up her hands and turned away.

Xander desperately thought. Buffy had them trapped. There was two ways this could go. Dusting, or resouling. Since the jewel was right now dancing to Buffy's tune, he _knew_ which horror Buffy was going to inflict on the pair of them. And he couldn't assume that she didn't know how to pull the pin on the jewel. After all, she knew how to use it cast the captive spell.

There was only one way out of this: get Buffy angry. Sure, he and Faith would be dust, but dust and nothingness was infinitely better than dealing with a pesky, whiny, little soul with its barbed tentacles constantly squeezing around his throat.

"When were you turned?" Buffy asked while her back was still with them.

"What gave us away?" Xander desperately countered as his mind scrambled for the perfect thing that would get Buffy pissed off enough to lose all perspective.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Faith asked as she turned her head to give him a yeallow-eyed glare. "Don't fucking encourage her whiny ass."

Buffy spun around and pointed at Xander. "Answer my question."

"You answer mine first," Xander shot back.

Buffy's nostrils flared. "Was it here? In Boston? Or Providence? Maybe Providence, yeah. I could see it. I heard there were bodies all over that college there. Brown, right? Not Brown. The street near there. Sayer? Thayer? Rhymed with Slayer, that's all I know."

"Fuck me," Faith groaned.

Xander steadfastly refused to answer Buffy or encourage Faith. Instead, he kept his yellowed, predatory eye on Buffy.

Buffy's jaw began to work, like she was trying to stop herself from screaming. "Or maybe it was Atlantic City. There was a mess there, too." She looked at Faith. "_You_ couldn't have been turned before then. No way. People saw you during the day there." She fixed her troubled glare on Xander. "But _you_…maybe Atlantic City. Maybe before. In Africa?"

"Arrrrghhhhh!" Faith violently shook her head. "Always the drama queen who's gotta strut the chickpain. Let it the fuck go already"

"I saw Xander in Rome a little over a year ago. He was on layover and he surprised me. He decided at the last minute to stay an extra day to hang out. He was alive then. I _know_ that." She looked up at him and her chin began to tremble. "But I don't know after that. I talked to him on the phone after. At least once a month. And there was emails. At least every week. And he didn't stay in contact with just me." She looked at him as if she were trying to figure out not only when things changed, but how she missed it. "But Xander didn't join us in London for Christmas, and the very occasional visits in Rome while he was on layover stopped. No one even questioned it because it seemed that his schedule got crazy busy over the past year. Besides, there were still phone calls and emails, so we thought he was okay."

Faith glowered down at the jewel. "She's never gonna fucking stop, is she?"

Buffy leaned against a pole and she looked very, very tired. "So all those times we talked over the past year. Who was I talking to? Him? Or you?"

Xander leapt at the opening Buffy left him and took his shot. "Every time I played with my food over the past year, I pictured in my head that I was playing with you."

Faith shot him a jealous yellow-eyed glare. "Fuck you, Harris."

Buffy's laugh was brittle. "All of the Slayers and Watchers Xander worked with are still alive, so I'm thinking not so much with the play time for you."

"Three Slayers dead in Africa," Xander sing-songed. "Bunny just tonight on Revere Beach. I can't claim credit for Zoe, though. I planned it, but that was Faith's beautiful fang work."

"Zoe?" Buffy asked in confusion.

Faith seemed to finally catch on to what Xander was doing. "I invited her to help us out here in sunny Revere earlier tonight." She licked her lips. "She tasted _real_ good, B."

"Notice she's not asking about the little people," Xander chuckled. "Guess they don't matter because they're not _Slayers_, hunh?"

"I've got two people in conductor-like uniforms and one almost-passenger I knocked out and dragged into a locked storage area back at that Wonderland place who'd disagree," Buffy snapped.

Xander scowled as Faith groaned. He was _right. _He _knew_ something was wrong back at the station and Faith had fluffed him off. Too bad he'd never get to say "I told you so" with his fists.

The train slowed down and the double chimes bonged. "Next stop Orient Heights."

Inspiration struck, and Xander widely grinned to show off his fangs. "You got me. I'm a bad, bad boy. I've got Spike's Slayer-killing record beat. Does this mean you'll want me to get on you, now? I bet your frigid cunt has been begging to fuck another dead man."

Buffy rushed at him as her hand reached behind her to pull out her hidden stake.

Xander kept his expression still. This was it. _He did it!_

Buffy suddenly stopped short with her hand frozen behind her back. Then she smiled and dropped her empty hand to her side. "Oooooooo. _Nice_. I see what you did there."

"I guess this means more speech-i-fying," Faith groaned.

Buffy doubled over in laugher as the train came to sharp stop. The double chimes bonged and the voice announced that they had arrived at Orient Heights.

"I gotta admit," Buffy said between peals of laughter. "You two are _good._ No one caught on. _No one_. Then I saw you guys making out hot and heavy and my vamp-dar pinged. And making it look like there was an epic battle with casualties in that parking lot?" She calmed down and hiccupped. "Not only told me everything I needed to know, but gave me time to call Giles for a quick consult about my options."

"No," Xander burst out.

Faith's head whipsawed between Xander and Buffy. "No, _what_?"

Buffy's smile turned nasty. "Didn't your sweetie here tell you? There's only one way to destroy the jewel."

"Buffy, don't." Xander hated the whining, pleading note in his voice as he dropped out of game face.

"Buffy, don't," Buffy nastily imitated him. "I can't _wait_ until Faith and Xander come home."

"Come home?" Faith asked with horror. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Buffy stalked up to them with a predatory gleam in her eye. "By the time they're through with the pair of you, you're going to be so repressed that you two are going to _wish_ I had staked you."

"What the fuck is going on?" Faith screamed.

The train jerked forward. The double chimes bonged, and the voice announced, "Now leaving Orient Heights. Next stop, Wood Island."

There was no point in avoiding the subject now, especially since Buffy had brought it up. "The jewel can be used to resoul us," Xander told Faith.

Faith's head whipped around to face him as she dropped out of game face. "You said it would _protect_ us from that bullshit."

"The Swiss Army knife of magical jewels, remember?" Buffy nastily asked.

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" Faith yelled at him.

"Because the price of the resouling is that it destroys the jewel, and no one wants to do that." Xander kept his eye on Buffy. "The Council won't be happy."

"I could give a damn about what Council wants," Buffy sweetly said. "Lucky for me, the leader of the whole Council loves me. And Xander. And, hey, he even loves Faith, which is a case of no accounting for taste if you ask me."

"You fucking bitch!" Faith hollered.

"Faith," Xander snapped.

Faith stopped and watched him expectantly. The look in her eyes indicated that she was ready to follow his lead.

Buffy rubbed her hands as she backed a safe distance away. "Best of all? You can't be unsouled. _Ever._ It's permanent. Even a de-souling spell done with your permission won't work," she chirpily announced. "Yup. Faith and Xander will be crazy-glued in there like crazy-glued things. It so sucks to be you right now."

Getting her angry wouldn't do it that much was clear.

But there was always guilt, and Faith had shown him how way back in the beginning.

"Guess this means you finally get your revenge," Xander calmly said.

"Don't interrupt me," Buffy said as she closed her eyes. "I have to concentrate."

"You never did forgive any of us for yanking you out of heaven," Xander calmly continued. "You must be thrilled the shoe's on the other foot. Give me a taste of my own medicine, hunh?"

Buffy's eyes popped open. "This isn't about that."

Xander frowned at her. "You sure about that? Because know what I see?"

"I don't care what you see," Buffy snapped at him. "You see wrong."

"I see a Slayer who's positively thrilled to be yanking the soul of one of her best friends right out of heaven," Xander said.

Buffy shook her head. "I…you're wrong…I mean…That's not what I'm doing."

Xander pursed his lips. "Soooo…you're saying you believe the soul is in hell?" Xander nodded. "Could be. Could be. I'm not a very good person, you know. I've been faking the good person act for years."

"You're not a person at all," Buffy furiously said. "Without Xander, you're just another dead thing."

Faith chose at that point to get in on the act. "Revenge. I should've known. I may not have helped yank her out of heaven, but I fucked her over plenty back in the day. Seeing a weak-ass version of me must get her panties all wet. I bet she's leaking right now."

"Stop it!" Buffy yelled. "This isn't about revenge!"

"We all saw you after you came back. How much you hated everyone. How much you hated _us_," Xander softly continued. "How you were _dead_ inside. How part of you is still dead. Don't bother to deny it. You never got your groove back, Buff. Part of you is still missing."

"Shut up," Buffy whispered. "I know what you're doing and it's not going to work."

Xander could see he was getting to her. He just needed to keep pushing until he convinced her to take the other path. "What you'll be doing to our poor, innocent souls will be _worse_ than what was done to you."

Buffy took a threatening step forward. "Stop it. I'm not listening."

"_You_ at least remember heaven, right? So you still have that slender hope that you'll get to go back," Xander soothingly continued. "But the souls? _Our_ souls? They don't even get that much, do they? No memory of heaven. None. Those poor, _innocent_ souls will just have to make do mental pictures of our partying days for their version of heaven."

"Xander and Faith didn't do anything wrong," Buffy's voice rose. "They _know_ that. They _know_ how it works. All those lies? All those bodies? That's all on _you_."

"That's right," Xander agreed with a nod. "And not just the bodies. There's also all the fun we had with people before we ate them. The way we played with them before throwing their barely recognizable corpses in the trash…_they'll_ know it all. They'll feel it. No heaven for them. Ever. Not even a hope of it."

Buffy's face looked like it wanted to crumble into a hail of tears. She looked like she wanted to curl into a ball with her arms wrapped around her head and scream. All the certainty that she was doing the right thing, that she was saving her friends, was gone from her eyes. Now she was trapped with reality of the awful choice she'd have to make: lose her friends forever in a cloud of dust, or condemn them to hell on earth with no chance of parole.

If Xander still had a heart, it would've sung. Even if he lost the gamble, even if she went through with the resouling, he was _still_ going to win. She'd spend the rest of her life wondering if she really was motivated by revenge, and his filthy little soul would suffer because she was suffering.

It was a cold comfort, true, but a pound of flesh was better than none.

Then Faith, his beautiful, smart Faith, threw fuel onto the fire. "Resouling's gonna mean nothing but pain. I should know. I was in Angel's head."

Buffy's head snapped up to look at Faith. "That wasn't you," she said in a cold voice.

"I got the memories, B," Faith said with a shrug. "If it wasn't me, then who was it?"

"Faith. Not you," Buffy insisted.

"I'm telling you, B," Faith jerked her head toward Xander, "you need to know he's speaking truth to the power. When those souls come back, they're going to go fucking crazy with guilt. I mean, bang your head against the stone walls until bits of broken skull stab your brain crazy. And they're gonna _scream_, B. They're not gonna stop screaming even when their throats start bleeding and they weep tears of blood. Those souls will be good and trapped, but they're gonna keep throwing themselves against the bars of their cage until these bodies turn into bloody smears on the walls."

Buffy opened her mouth to argue, but Xander beat her to the punch.

"You know it's true. Remember Spike's crazy days right after he ended up with a soul?" Xander asked.

"And Angel, B," Faith shook her head, "Angel spent centuries goin' two steps forward, three steps back. And he was in constant pain every step of the way. Even when he did good, he couldn't escape all the bad shit he'd done. You really wanna do that to people you actually give a flying fuck about? You really wanna see us suffer like that?"

Xander heard the 'us' in Faith's last question and he immediately knew that Faith had made a mistake. Buffy might want to spare their souls pain, but he was very sure that she wanted to punish the vampires even more.

Buffy's face got hard and she slowly stalked up to them.

The train slowed, the double chimes bonged, and the voice said, "Next stop, Wood Island."

She got within arm's reach of their frozen bodies, and Xander desperately wished he could break the spell that kept him from reaching out and snapping her neck.

"Xander and Faith aren't going to suffer," she promised in a soft voice. "Because they're going to have one thing that neither Angel nor Spike had when they first got their souls."

Faith snorted. "What? A shitload of Council shrinks?"

Buffy lifted her chin. "_Me._"

Xander shivered.

"And when they open their eyes 5 seconds from now, the first thing they're going to see is me holding their hands telling them that the nightmare's over and that it's going to be all right," Buffy quietly promised.

"You're making a mistake," Xander insisted.

Buffy grimaced as she said through clenched teeth, "I want my friends back you son of a bitch."

"You fucking cunt!" Faith exploded as Buffy backed a safe distance away with a determined expression on her face.

The train slid to a smooth stop as double chimes bonged, and the voice announced, "Wood Island."

Faith continued throwing invective after invective at Buffy, swearing bloody revenge, swearing to piss on her grave, swearing to _put_ her in her grave. She then moved on to threatening to kill everyone Buffy ever loved in front of the Slayer's eyes, soul or no soul.

Xander's calm voice rose, knowing that he'd be heard over Faith. "I'll never thank you for saving me."

Buffy looked him right in the eye and began speaking in halting, stumbling Latin.

"Never, Buffy," Xander said. "I'll never forgive you for it, either, any more than you forgave them for yanking you out of heaven."

Buffy's voice rose in volume and her expression became serene.

"I'll hate you for the rest of your life," Xander swore.

The train jerked forward, the double chimes bonged, and the voice announced, "Now leaving Wood Island. Next stop, Airport station."

"I'll still hate you when you're dust in your _grave_," Xander coldly promised.

Buffy was practically shouting when the now-forgotten jewel shattered in his and Faith's hands and drove splinters into their palms.

Faith fell silent, and Xander lost all power of speech.

Buffy reached the end of the spell.

And as the last train leaving Wonderland picked up speed and leapt forward through the night, Xander and Faith began the long journey home.

( 4 )


End file.
